ON ST. LIBERATA OTHERWISE WILGEFORTIS VIRGIN AND MARTYR
IN VARIOUS PARTS OF EUROPE
HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
Wilgefortis or Liberata, in various parts of Europe (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. C.
§ I. Various and intricate difficulties are proposed.
About to treat of the Saint proposed in the title, I enter a vast labyrinth, which is entangled with so many and so various windings of paths, that I scarcely dare to promise myself any exit from it. I said vast, because it embraces almost all Europe, which must be traversed to illustrate the life of this Saint. St. Liberata polyonymous in Belgium But lest I detain the reader by writing a longer prologue, I approach the matter itself, and begin the labyrinthine journey from our Belgium. First of all I observe that in very many places of Belgium St. Liberata is worshipped, and is commonly called Wilgefortis, and in the vernacular Oncommera or Ontcommena; which last Flemish word has a great affinity of signification with the Latin word Liberata. Some Belgians, not content with this fourfold appellation of the Saint, moreover call her Liberatrix, Eutropia, Regrufledis or Regenflegis; by all which names they wish the same Saint to be signified. Of this their polyonymous Saint they generally narrate that she was the daughter of the king of Portugal, who, to avoid the nuptials of the king of Sicily, obtained a long beard from God, and then, on account of the public profession of the Christian religion and the constant love of virginity, by the command of her pagan father was put upon a cross and obtained the palm of martyrdom.
[2] Leaving Belgium, I set out into Gaul, and after traversing a rather great space of land I find in Aquitaine, also in Aquitaine, a province of Gaul, a province of the same kingdom, St. Liberata, in French sainte Livrade, celebrated already in the time of Charlemagne. But is this the same as the preceding? This is the task, this the labor. Two Gallican Martyrologists indeed assert it, and think, or rather suppose, that this is the same as she who is worshipped in Belgium, Spain, and Portugal: but they bring forward no arguments for their opinion; nay, they do not even produce the Acts of the Saint. Perhaps on account of the mere identity of the name they so judged; but that reason moves us little, who by daily experience learn that many Saints are confounded on account of synonymy. In this very month of July, which we are now occupied in illustrating, we have several examples of this matter: for that various Antonini were conflated into one is shown on 4 July. Several homonymous Modwennas wrongly confounded are distinguished on the 6th of the same month. On the 10th it is demonstrated that three Amelbergas are to be distinguished, whom some, deceived by homonymy, confounded. Very many confusions of this kind occur everywhere in our work, to detect which we expend a prodigious labor, for which nevertheless we win little thanks from some, nay we offend not a few who are more desirous of their own glory than of the Saints', because, compelled by the love of truth, we take away from their popular Saints or patrons those things which, done by other synonyms, were before promiscuously ascribed to them. Let these things be said in passing on occasion. Now I return to my design.
[3] and at Sigüenza in Spain Since the aforesaid Gallican writers attribute to one and the same St. Liberata, honored already for many centuries in Aquitaine, also the Belgian, Spanish, and Portuguese cult, and thus, without further instruction, desert me, exposed to a triple journey, I know not which way is chiefly to be chosen, that I may thoroughly examine this their opinion. If I return into Belgium, there is there no notice of the Aquitanian cult of St. Liberata or Wilgefortis. Therefore I must pass into Spain or Portugal. But first let us proceed into Spain, if perhaps someone here may lead us out of the labyrinth. At once here very many offer themselves, to show me in the church of Sigüenza the magnificent sepulchre of St. Liberata, in which her sacred body, brought already four centuries ago from Florence to Sigüenza, rests, and is honored with the highest veneration of the faithful. When I interrogate them concerning the country, stock, Acts, and translation of this Saint, most affirm that she was the daughter of a Portuguese kinglet, brought forth at a single birth with her eight sisters, and crowned with the laurel of martyrdom in Portugal, whose body was afterward translated into Italy, and from Italy into Spain. If I demand the ancient documents of the prodigious birth and of the first translation, they must needs confess that they lack them, or show them in certain pseudo-chronicles or writers of the same meal. Of the translation made from Italy into Spain they seem to have more certain instruments.
[4] she is believed to be worshipped; The Sigüenza guides, who hitherto had gone the same way, now, concerning the name and punishment of their Saint, go off into different directions. The more ancient call the patroness of their church only by the name of Liberata, and hand down that she was beheaded; but the more recent superadded to their holy martyr the name of Wilgefortis, and say that she was crucified. I suspect that they added that name of Wilgefortis, received from the Belgian writers, to their martyr Liberata, and on that account also changed the kind of punishment, or, to speak more clearly, fitted to their holy Liberata the punishment of the cross constantly asserted of St. Wilgefortis by the Belgians and Germans. For I will not here hear the Pseudo-Julian and his followers, who will have it that she was first hung on a cross and then beheaded. Namely, by this new fiction, unknown to the ancient people of Sigüenza, they strive craftily to confound St. Liberata with Wilgefortis. Be that as it may, placed at the crossroads by the people of Sigüenza, I shall follow the elder guides of the way, in whom I think more trust is to be placed, although not even they themselves are so skilled in the ways as to be able to show me an easy exit from the labyrinth. Since the Spaniards assign to the martyr St. Liberata worshipped among them Portugal as her country and the arena of her martyrdom, let us pass into it, and see whether there more ancient or more certain documents concerning this Saint are offered.
[5] Having entered Portugal, I turn over the Martyrology printed at Coimbra in the year 1591, the Portuguese Martyrology wrongly thinks the same and in the notes concerning the proper Saints of that kingdom page 21 I read these Portuguese words: Concerning St. Wilgefortis virgin and martyr of Portugal we do not know in particular where she was born, where crowned with martyrdom, or where her relics exist. Afterward the author of the notes, for certain slight reasons, is of opinion that St. Liberata patroness of Sigüenza, and St. Wilgefortis or Ontcommera celebrated in Belgium and Germany, are one and the same; he had read, namely, in the additions of Molanus, that St. Wilgefortis or Ontcommera is also called in Latin Liberata; and thus from the homonymy of the holy martyrs he passed judgment for their identity. But to me St. Liberata, patroness of the church of Sigüenza, seems different from her who is worshipped in Belgium, because the Belgian Acts differ much from the people of Sigüenza, especially the more ancient. Besides, among the Spaniards and Portuguese, concerning the manly beard of St. Liberata (this prodigy
the Belgians and Germans everywhere narrate concerning St. Wilgefortis in her Acts) there is so deep a silence, that on that account Tamayo in his notes to the Spanish Martyrology on 20 July, however much without sufficient foundation, suspects that by the Germans through error is worshipped St. Paula Barbata, the virgin of Ávila, concerning whom there was treatment on 20 February.
[6] Before I proceed, there remains a scruple concerning the cited Portuguese Martyrology, [which, published in the year 1591, could have been corrupted by the author of the Pseudo-Dexter.] which was printed in the year 1591, before the chronicle of the Pseudo-Dexter was brought to light. Hence someone might infer that the Pseudo-Dexter was not the first who confounded St. Liberata with Wilgefortis. To preclude access to this objection, I forewarn that by the Pseudo-Dexter I understand not only his book, but the author himself, who before publishing his pseudo-chronicle could secretly supply various fictions to others. Add that Father Jerome de la Higuera, consulted by the Portuguese concerning St. Liberata, already from the year 1591, in letters given to Augustine de Castro archbishop of Braga, answered on this matter, as the successor of that prelate Roderick da Cunha attests in the Ecclesiastical History of Braga, Part 1 chapter 26 number 4. Let these few things be understood, which it will help to remember for the following paragraphs. Now let us hear the opinions of others.
[7] Martin Carrillo, in the Chronological Annals of the world, Carrillo admits two St. Liberatas of Portugal; printed at Zaragoza in the year 1634, book 2, distinguishes a double St. Liberata in Portugal, and relying on the authority of the Pseudo-Dexter confidently calls both also Wilgefortis. One he sets at the year of Christ 138 with her eight sisters, whose Life he says is reported in the Sigüenza and Palencia Breviary; but the other he places at the year 308, and narrates that she, sought by a lover to a lascivious love, a manly beard suddenly growing forth, escaped the peril of losing her virginity, and then, on account of the constant defense of virginal modesty and the Christian faith, was affixed to a cross; and he adds that on account of this miracle of the beard she is surnamed Barbata; but called Liberata, because God had freed her from this danger. It is sufficiently manifest that Carrillo drew these things, with a few changes, from German or Belgian writers, and attributed them at his own pleasure to one St. Liberata, whereas the Spaniards or Portuguese, and not even the authors of the Pseudo-chronicles themselves, make mention of the beard of St. Liberata granted from heaven.
[8] [But the prelate of Braga acknowledges only one Portuguese, but says the other is of Como,] A wholly different way, and little trodden by others, is entered upon by the most illustrious and reverend Don Roderick da Cunha archbishop of Braga, asserting that St. Liberata or Wilgefortis (whom he thinks to be the same also worshipped under the name of Ontcommera by the peoples of Germany), after her martyrdom was accomplished, was buried by the Christians in the city of Cale in Portugal, and that of her translation from this place to another nothing is hitherto known. By which manner of speaking he sufficiently indicates that he thinks the bones of St. Liberata still rest in the same place where they were first laid. If thou objectest that St. Liberata buried in the city of Cale, by his own testimony, is one of nine sisters brought forth at a single birth, and so that same one, according to the Spanish Breviaries and historical monuments, was translated to Sigüenza, he answers that the St. Liberata whom the people of Sigüenza venerate is a virgin of Como, whose body Simon Giron bishop of Sigüenza carried from Italy into Spain. Behold, where I had hoped to be extricated from the winding turnings of the paths, I am more and more entangled in them. Since, therefore, I have not succeeded this way, we shall try to go out by another way, and shall sail into the Italy assigned by the most illustrious prelate.
[9] who is not worshipped in Italy as a martyr. In Italy, besides St. Liberata of Pavia, I find another virgin of the same name of Como, concerning whom the question was chiefly instituted in the preceding number. This last indeed, according to Augustine Valerius, bishop of Verona, in the book on the bishops and Saints of Verona page 26, in certain Calendars was described a virgin and martyr, but wrongly, as he himself there contends, page 27, saying that St. Liberata was the sister of St. Faustina, who both were virgins only. Nay, he says, by the tradition of those celebrating her feast in that very church she is celebrated a virgin only. There are extant also two verses at the head of her ancient image on the wall of that church attesting this:
O virgin Liberata, kindly in piety by prayers to God, be thou mindful of me, freeing me from a malignant death.
This one therefore is different from St. Liberata who is honored at Sigüenza, unless someone assign another virgin and martyr in Italy, whom the people of Sigüenza could have translated to themselves, or unless he will have it that they worship a virgin for a martyr, and so that the Sigüenza history both of the life and of the translation is altogether false, which is not easily to be admitted without grave arguments. Hence also it further follows that that holy virgin of Como is plainly different from St. Liberata or Wilgefortis worshipped in Belgium. Therefore I must not tarry here longer, since St. Wilgefortis, into whose cult and origin I chiefly inquire, is unknown to the Italians.
[10] St. Liberata is believed by some to be buried in Holland; Opportunely in this place I recall a letter to be exhibited afterward, which the Reverend Father Andrew of St. Nicholas, ex-Provincial of the Carmelites, gave to us in the year 1706 from Burgundy, and from which I understand that the Swiss and Bavarians knew something singular concerning the burial of St. Liberata or Wilgefortis. It helps, therefore, leaving Italy, to seek Switzerland and Bavaria, and to investigate this new document concerning the sepulchre of St. Wilgefortis. There I behold the bearded Virgin, commonly called Kumernuss, and affixed to a cross. I read appended to her little pictures an epitome of the Acts, which as to substance agrees with the Belgian Legend. But behold, at the end of this epitome is added a clause which contains a notice plainly new and hitherto unknown to the Martyrologists in these few words: She was buried in Holland in a church which is called Steinberg. Truly it is worth the trouble to go to Holland itself, to inspect the place of burial in person, and to examine the ancient monuments of this matter.
[11] I pass over therefore now Prague, the chief and most ample city of Bohemia, but no notice of that burial survives there. into which the cult of St. Wilgefortis was recently introduced. I omit the village of Muringen by the Hercynian forest, in which under the name of Cumerana she is seen crucified, and is said to be most famous for miracles. I pass over Mainz, where the occasion of the martyrdom narrated in the German Acts differs from all others. I pass by other cities of Germany, and set my course straight into Holland. When, having entered it, I interrogate the inhabitants concerning the church of Steinberg, they deny that they know a Steinberg in Holland; to me inquiring further they answer that in the borders of Brabant nearest to them there is a town of this name. Wherefore I, suspecting that the Swiss and Bavarians placed the Steinberg neighboring on Holland and subject to its dominion, by error, in Holland itself, hasten to that town, and consulting the Catholics who survive there, I find nothing but the vernacular name of St. Ontcommera given to a certain field. The other monuments concerning the sepulchre and cult are there plainly unknown. Whether they ever existed, whether they perished by the injury of times or by the various calamities which this town sustained, I know not.
[12] Now, wearied of fruitless labor, I had resolved to seek home again, She is worshipped in England, Normandy, and other places; when it occurred to me that the name of St. Wilgefortis, with others Wilfordis, sounds something English, I know not what, and perhaps in this island, once most fruitful and most zealous of saints, a more celebrated memory of her is had. Wherefore, lest I be said to have neglected anything concerning this Saint, I set sail from the Dutch port into England. I find there an ancient little book of prayers composed for the use of the church of Salisbury, in which St. Wilgefortis, among other holy English virgins and martyrs, is invoked in the Litanies of all the Saints, and elsewhere is celebrated with a peculiar antiphon and prayer, so that her cult seems formerly to have been solemn in England. But now, after the disturbance of all things especially sacred, further notices are sought in vain in this kingdom. Since I once heard that the same holy woman obtains a cult also in Normandy, I cross from England into this province of Gaul. Arrived at the city of Dieppe, I learn that our Saint is celebrated with great piety of the faithful in the village of Arques not far distant from Dieppe, and in other places of this region. But here, the name of Liberata being lost, she is called only Dignefortis, Wilgefortis, or Virgofortis; but whence, how, and when the cult of that holy Virgin and martyr passed into this province of Gaul, is unknown.
[13] But the country, time, sepulchre, and other things of the Saint are uncertain. And thus indeed, the greater part of Europe having been traversed, almost as doubtful as I had gone out, I return home: for concerning the origin, life, chronology, burial, and other circumstances of the Acts of St. Wilgefortis all things are uncertain. Shall I call her English or Gallic? Belgian or German? Italian or Portuguese? Most think her Portuguese; but the very name Wilgefortis seems to deny that origin; nay, there are not wanting those who affirm that she was born in Gaul. In one word, so insoluble is that knot of the Acts, that I hope to loose it not otherwise than by cutting. I confess indeed that in our work intricate Acts occur everywhere, but hitherto I do not remember to have read any more entangled. In most there is a dispute between one or another city or province; but this obscure controversy pertains to several regions of Europe. I spared no labor in turning over and examining the monuments of various nations; nevertheless after all these have been surveyed I am even now engaged in a labyrinthine circle, from which I see no exit, unless perhaps I imitate those who, shut in a labyrinth, after long and fruitless circuits break through the enclosures, and in this manner such as it is find an egress. Whether and how I shall do this, the rest of the commentary will teach. Let it suffice in this paragraph to have given the whole difficulty to be viewed as it were under one glance. Now we shall treat more fully of the several points of the controversy.
§ II. The various Saints named Liberata.
I think that certain holy women, called by the name of Liberata, must be premised, that the following paragraphs may be more clearly understood, and that St. Liberata, Among the various St. Liberatas of whom we here treat, may, so far as can be done, be distinguished, or at least less confounded. First occurs St. Liberata of Pavia, of whom Bolland treated on 16 January. Another St. Liberata, who with St. Faustina her sister in a monastery about the year of Christ 580 is said to have migrated peacefully from life, is celebrated at Como and in other cities of Italy, as may be seen in the same Bolland on 18 January. The third is St. Liberata the virgin, who with her sister St. Olivaria at Calvimont in Gaul in the 6th century piously died, as our Acts have on 3 February. A fourth St. Liberata is worshipped chiefly by the Belgians and Germans, who also call her
Wilgefortis and commonly Oncommera or Ontcommena. To the Gauls also is known, at least as to the name, a certain St. Liberata, who already from the time of Charlemagne was worshipped in Aquitaine. She is called in French Sainte Livrade, and was formerly in this region so celebrated that she had several chapels dedicated to her cult; nay, certain villages drew the origin of their appellation from her. Whether this one is different from her who is celebrated in Belgium, or Spain, or Portugal, I think uncertain. Yet let us hear the judgment of the Gauls on this matter.
[15] Claude Castellan, in the Martyrology with notes on 23 February, speaks thus of this last: one formerly famous in Aquitaine When Charlemagne had built a church near his palace of Cassinogilum on the Lot in the territory of Agen, he ordered it to be dedicated to the name of this Saint (namely Liberata, of whom he treats), who probably died near this region, and whose relics afforded the cause of this dedication, according to the frequent usage of that century. Then he says that this St. Liberata in an apocryphal Legend afterward composed was taken as one of the eight sisters of St. Quiteria, and that it seemed to him to be the same who is believed to be honored in Portugal and Belgium. Would that he had produced solid reasons for this his assertion, and brought some light to dispel the darkness of this history. But whatever that St. Liberata may be, she must have been anciently celebrated enough, since she left her name given to certain places of Gaul. Of this etymology the praised Castellan is a witness, who concludes his notes with these words: This church of St. Liberata founded by Charlemagne was made a Priory of the Order of St. Benedict, around which grew up the town of St. Liberata. Besides the Priory, which now belongs to the congregation of St. Maur, there is in that town a convent of Ursulines. Papirius Masso, in the description of the rivers of Gaul, has this concerning the same place page 580: Hence Cassinogilum of a not less happy soil succeeds, and next St. Liberata, most powerful in fruits and commerce. Of this place also Adrian Valois makes mention in passing in the Notitia of the Gauls page 500.
[16] More copiously, but at the same time more confusedly, the celebrity of St. Liberata in Gaul Simon Peyronet proves in the notes to his Martyrology of holy men and women: by Simon Peyronet for after he had treated on page 484 of St. Liberata of Como, he adds the following: But there is also Bl. Liberata the martyr, who is reported by the same Ferrarius in the general Catalogue of the Saints also on 18 January. As also by Thomas Trujillo volume 1 of the Treasury of sermons, and others. But the church of Sigüenza, where her body is handed down to rest, worships her with a double Office with an Octave on 20 July. Of her Ambrosio Morales book XII of his History, Marieta book IV of the Saints of Spain. That Saint, who by Papirius Masso in the book on the rivers of Gaul is called Sainte Livrade in the vernacular, has several churches or chapels in Aquitaine sacred to her, and in the diocese of Toulouse gives a name to a village and parish not far distant from Toulouse near the island of the Jordan, commonly Sainte Livrade. Not obscure also is the village of St. Liberata, Sainte Livrade, not far from Agen.
[17] This writer, as is clear from his words, is of opinion that this Saint is the same as St. Liberata of Sigüenza; she is supposed to be the same as her, but since he expresses no motive for his opinion, I hitherto cannot embrace his sentence: for if it were permitted to indulge suspicions destitute of the testimony of the ancients, I should suspect by the same right that the Saint who in Aquitaine has several churches is not different from St. Liberata of Como, or of Pavia, or the other of Calvimont, whose relics were carried thither; nay, I should rather suspect her to be Aquitanian, as we have an example in St. Quiteria, whom the Gascons claim for themselves, although the Portuguese contend that she is theirs. Nor does it matter that perhaps in Aquitaine the Acts of Liberata of Sigüenza are read: for in Gascony the same fabulous Acts of St. Quiteria were read which are commonly handed down by the Spaniards and Portuguese, although she did not pertain to Portugal, as is shown in our Acts on 22 May.
[18] The Spaniards describe St. Liberata, who is worshipped at Sigüenza, in different ways. whom the people of Sigüenza worship in Spain, That that diversity, to be observed here for the following paragraphs, may appear more manifestly, it will suffice to give what F. Thomas Trujillo has concerning her in his Treasury of preachers, which he composed before the pseudonymous chronicles of Fl. Lucius Dexter, M. Maximus, and Julian Peter were born. He, volume 2 on the feasts of the Saints, printed at Barcelona in the year 1583 column 450, on the feast of blessed Liberata narrates the following: In the church commonly called of Sigüenza, Liberata is held in the greatest honor, who, the word being somewhat changed, is wont to be named Librata. There is there a certain sumptuous and magnificent sepulchre of this Saint, and of various, diverse, and wonderful jasper, so that this sepulchre by the marvelous art with which it is constructed seems easily to be compared with any other. Her feast is celebrated on 18 January, but the translation on 15 July.
[19] and whose Acts, taken from the ancient lessons, Then he sets forth her Acts, from the ecclesiastical lessons of that time somewhat more credible, or at least not yet plainly corrupted and confounded by the new figments of the Pseudo-Dexter and his followers, in these words: But in her lessons it is said that this Saint was the daughter of a certain king or prince, some man who was called Catelius, but his consort was called Calsia, and the chief city of his kingdom was called Balcagia. And as some say, this was the chief city among the western cities, whether it was a city of Spain or of another province. Now these kings were gentiles, and had nine daughters, whose names are these: Liberata, Genibera, Victoria, Eumelia, Germana, Gema, Marcia, Basilia, and Quiteria. Now all these sisters were Christians from their childhood, and when they were most excellently instructed in the faith, Liberata, who among the rest seemed to excel in faith and religion, by her example and holy words converted many gentiles: for leading a solitary life in a certain desert, many both Christians and also gentiles flocked to her.
[20] are here exhibited by Trujillo. At this time the Romans published a certain edict against the Christians, so that they should either abandon the Christian law or be immediately killed. Now Liberata was then accused with her sisters and other Christians, except Quiteria alone, who triumphed by herself and was martyred in another manner. And they brought them before their father, and when he could not bend them by blandishments to abandon the faith of Christ, an impetus and diabolical spirit prevailing in him more than paternal love, after he had tortured and tore their flesh with various torments, at last they are beheaded. Although it is not sufficiently established whether it was Liberata alone who was beheaded by the father's command, or whether the other sisters also were beheaded, and the other Christians who had been captured and bound with them. But it is asserted by all writers that holy Liberata sustained martyrdom either from this judge or from another. But after many years bishop Simeon placed the body of holy Liberata in a certain silver ark, and placed it in a certain eminent place, commanding that she be worshipped by all and held in veneration.
[21] This one the archbishop of Braga contends to be Italian, Certain Portuguese claim for themselves St. Liberata, whose Acts we have here given from Trujillo, and will have her to be altogether distinct from the Sigüenza one. Let one stand for all, the most illustrious and reverend Don Roderick da Cunha archbishop of Braga, who in his Ecclesiastical History part 1 chapter 26 number 3 has the following, which I thus render into Latin from the Portuguese idiom: The name of St. Liberata afforded an occasion to nearly all authors of our time, both Spanish and Portuguese, of confounding her with another St. Liberata, whose feast the church of Sigüenza celebrates on 15 July, because there it possesses her precious body, whereas meanwhile those are altogether distinct from each other: for St. Liberata of Sigüenza was Italian, and born, as we more probably think, at Como, a city of the Duchy of Milan… But our St. Liberata is known at Braga, as we have already said. The Italian St. Liberata the Roman Martyrology commemorates, attributing to her only the title of Virgin, At Como, of St. Liberata the virgin, as Usuardus also does. Ours was not only a virgin, but besides was a martyr, having suffered for the faith on 20 July. The Italian one bishop Simon Giron translated from Florence to Sigüenza with a special faculty under the Pontificate of Boniface VIII, who was between the years 1294 and 1302, as is clear from the Breviary of that church in the matins lessons of 15 July, when there this feast is celebrated… But since at Sigüenza the Portuguese St. Liberata was chiefly known, the writers of that time, not distinguishing between the one and the other, easily accommodated to the Italian the things which pertained to the Portuguese, and to this many things which pertained to the Italian. Finally, after having adduced the authority of certain learned men agreeing with him, and having narrated the life and death of St. Liberata, the most illustrious prelate thus concludes the cited chapter: The relics of this great Virgin and martyr the Christians buried in the same city of Cale. We do not know that they were thence translated elsewhere: for the Sigüenza relics, as we have already said, are those of the Italian St. Liberata.
[22] John Tamayo Salazar sharply impugns this opinion of the illustrious writer in his Spanish Martyrology on 20 July, thus defending the cause of the people of Sigüenza: whose opinion Tamayo opposes: From the summits of truth departed Don Roderick de Acuña, History of Braga part 1 chapter 26 number 3, affirming that St. Liberata, whom we behold venerated in the temple of Sigüenza, and whose sacred pledges we know to be preserved there, is that of the holy Virgin of this name worshipped at Como a city of Italy, and at Florence. For if he had read the monuments of that church, without doubt he would not have struck upon these rocks of error. From them, therefore, it manifestly appears that the sacred relics of the blessed virgin of Como were in the year 1317 translated from a lowly place into the greater basilica of the city of Como, as is clear from the lessons of the Breviary of Como adduced by Philip Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy on 18 January folio XXXVI. But (as Acuña himself confesses) those things which are laid up in the temple of Sigüenza, bishop Simon of Sigüenza brought from Florence to Sigüenza by leave of Boniface VIII Supreme Pontiff in the year 1294; therefore those things could by no means be translated to Sigüenza which afterward, 23 years having elapsed, were translated into the basilica of Como. Although I see that this argument of Tamayo can be answered, yet I willingly confess that St. Liberata of Sigüenza is more probably distinct from her of Como; nay, for the favor of the people of Sigüenza I here add another proof, passed over by Tamayo,
For in the last translation of St. Liberata of Sigüenza, made in the year 1537, as Balthasar Porreño reports in her Life page 98 from the ancient Breviary, the shift of that same Virgin was seen so drenched with fresh blood, as if it had been shed the day before. If these things are true, how can they agree with St. Liberata of Como, who shed no blood for Christ, but living holily in a monastery with St. Faustina her sister, peacefully fell asleep in the Lord, as may be seen more fully in her Acts published by Bolland on 18 January. Mariana writes that she suffered at Sigüenza.
[23] Concerning St. Liberata our John Mariana hands down something singular in the History of the affairs of Spain book 4 chapter 14, where, against the opinion of all his countrymen, he writes that she suffered at Sigüenza in these words: To these times and calamity are referred Verissimus, Maximus, and Julia, brethren, slain at Lisbon, Victor at Braga, Zoilus at Córdoba and nineteen others, Centolla and Helena near Burgos, at Sigüenza Liberata and Quiteria, and others, whom if we should wish to recount one by one, the oration would find neither manner nor end of speaking. As far as here pertains to St. Liberata, I think that Mariana took the place of the cult for the arena of the martyrdom by error. What he immediately subjoins perhaps has place in this very matter which we treat; at least her hagiographers ought often to remember it. Of all these martyrs, he says, in what places their bodies are at this time, of some it is easy to affirm, of most not so, others proclaiming them elsewhere; perhaps, the sacred remains being distributed into several parts, various opinions arose, those in whose keeping was only a part thinking that they had the whole.
[24] Some assert one, others a double St. Liberata in Portugal. The more recent defenders of the Pseudo-chronicles do not agree among themselves, some admitting one, others a double St. Liberata. Some establish one with eight sisters at the year of Christ 138; another at the year 308, lest, namely, they seem contrary to their dear Flavius Dexter, who at these different years makes mention of St. Liberata. Hence Ferdinand de Camargo, in his sacred Chronology at the years 138 and 308, carefully distinguishes the one from the other. From the same motive Balthasar Porreño, in the Life of St. Liberata of Sigüenza page 39, acknowledges a double Wilgefortis: The same name of Wilgefortis, he says, another holy Portuguese woman had, of whose martyrdom the aforesaid Flavius Dexter makes mention in the year three hundred. Nay, Martin Carrillo, for the favor of this false-speaking oracle, retracts the opinion which he had before maintained concerning the epoch of St. Liberata and her sisters: for in the Chronological Annals printed at Zaragoza in the year 1634 he thus writes in Spanish at the year of Christ 138: Some place their (namely St. Liberata's and her sisters') martyrdom in the year of the Lord 306, and so we also wrote in the first edition of these Annals. Dexter and the archpriest Julian place it in the time of the emperor Hadrian. Afterward, at the year of Christ 308, treating of St. Liberata, whom he also calls Wilgefortis and Barbata, he speaks thus: She is different from St. Liberata, of whom and of the eight sisters there was treatment in the year 138. Other disciples of the Pseudo-Dexter interpret their classic author otherwise, and explain it of one and the same St. Liberata. But it wearies us to wander longer in vain in this labyrinth. Let us treat of the Sigüenza cult of St. Liberata, whatever she may be.
§ III. The cult of St. Liberata in Spain.
Sigüenza, according to Livy and Pliny, a city of the Celtiberians in Tarraconensian Spain, now commonly Sigüenza, is situated on a hill at the roots of Mount Atienza, St. Liberata translated to Sigüenza, and is nearly midway between Bilbilis and Complutum. This episcopal city possesses the relics of St. Liberata, which, brought to it from elsewhere, it venerates with the highest piety. This translation of the relics John Tamayo reports, from various, as he says, papers of writers, in the Spanish Martyrology on 15 July. But he fetches it so deep, and amplifies it with so many words, that I think he will not prove from legitimate and ancient papers all that he narrates: and since in similar matters I have often found this writer to deceive or be deceived, I have preferred to bring forward briefer documents of this translation, and indeed collated with others, from the ancient Sigüenza Breviary, from which Balthasar Porreño attests that he received them in the Life of St. Liberata, where on page 98 he has the following: After the martyrdom of blessed Liberata, her holy body in the course of time was laid up by Simon, then bishop of Sigüenza, in this fostering church, in whose time it was translated from regular to secular by apostolic authority in the year of the Lord 1300. This was the chief translation which we know, which was made from the city of Florence to Sigüenza. Of this also Aegidius Gonzalez Davila makes mention in the Ecclesiastical Theatre volume 1 concerning the church of Sigüenza chapter 8, where he has more things concerning the deeds and epitaph of Simon bishop of Sigüenza.
[26] Concerning the last translation the same ancient Breviary treats in these words: and afterward more magnificently adorned Then the illustrious Frederick of Portugal, then of Sigüenza and at last of Zaragoza, built a royal chapel under the name of this blessed Virgin, where the holy body, with wonderful fragrance, in a silver ark, enclosed within one of stone, on 15 July in the year of the Lord 1537, miracles being wrought, was honorably translated (for the shift of that same Virgin was seen so drenched with fresh blood, as if it had been shed the day before), and at the same time the venerable relics of the holy apostles John and Thomas, of Stephen, Ignatius, Blaise, Gamaliel, Maurus, Hilary, and Sixtus, and of very many martyrs, confessors, and virgins; the people gathering from every quarter, to be present at that same translation, and to obtain the plenary indulgence granted by Adrian VI, Clement VII, and Paul III then Roman pontiff, the most Christian Charles V, emperor of the Romans, reigning in Spain. What is here said of the indulgence granted by three Pontiffs, I think must be so understood, that it was first obtained from Adrian VI, and, he being dead, again obtained from Clement VII, at last, the translation, I know not for what cause, being deferred for some years, the same indulgence was confirmed by Paul III. I cannot so easily explain the year of this last translation, which is here said to have been 1537; since Aegidius Gonzalez Davila, in his Ecclesiastical Theatre of the church of Sigüenza chapter 18, asserts that that translation was made under the most illustrious and reverend Don Ferdinand Niño, who, according to the reckoning of the same writer, only in the year 1546 first came to the see of Sigüenza. These things, I say, I cannot combine, unless perhaps an error crept into the arithmetical number, and for the year 1537 the year 1547 is to be read.
[27] After this translation it was the chief care of the prelates of Sigüenza she began to be worshipped with a proper Office, that a proper Office concerning St. Liberata, who was placed in a magnificent sepulchre, should be recited. This, pious and elegant, according to Balthasar Porreño in the Life of St. Liberata page 97, is had in the Sigüenza Breviary, to whose printing an end was put in the year 1561. That Breviary I have not seen; but I scarcely doubt that in it are contained the Lessons which Prudentius Sandoval in the Antiquity of the city and church of Tuy page 38 and following produced from the Sigüenza lectionary, or which Bivarius in the commentary on the chronicle of Flavius Lucius Dexter page 237 exhibits; where he says that he collected this history from the Breviary of Sigüenza and Palencia, as it was wont to be read in the ancient and venerable Breviaries of Spain in the divine Offices on the feast of St. Liberata. In these ancient lessons the prodigious history of the nine sisters brought forth at a single birth is indeed read, but neither the name of Portugal or of Wilgefortis, nor the punishment of the cross, nor the arena or time of the martyrdom are expressed; which nevertheless we see all expressed in the more recent Office. Let it help to remember these things for the following paragraphs.
[28] in which, after the invention of the Pseudo-Dexter After the fictitious invention of Flavius Lucius Dexter, and its first edition made in the year 1619 at Zaragoza, the church of Sigüenza changed the lessons of St. Liberata, and inserted into its Office certain circumstances before unknown, and, as I suspect, drawn from the new Pseudo-Dexter. This, when in the year 1625 the sacred Congregation of Rites had permitted it to be read, was in the following year first printed at Madrid. After more than fifty years the same Office is proposed of St. Liberata virgin and martyr, patroness of the church and diocese of Sigüenza, a double of the second class (that is the title of the Office which I have), reviewed and approved by the sacred Congregation of Rites, to be celebrated in the kingdoms of the Spains on the 20th day of the month of July by all of both sexes who are bound to the Canonical hours, according to the decree of the same sacred congregation of 26 September 1682. According to these grants of the sacred congregation, the people of Sigüenza celebrate their patroness with a solemn Office, in which, besides the lessons of the second Nocturn, of which presently, they have the following proper. The antiphon at the Magnificat in the first vespers is this: Let us solemnly celebrate the glorious triumph of St. Liberata, who, hanging on the cross, conquered hell and overcame the torments of the tyrants, alleluia. The antiphon at the Benedictus: Although holy Liberata was tried with very many blandishments and threats to desert the Christian faith and her modesty, she remained stable and firm in the contest, and on the cross rendered her unpolluted spirit to God. The antiphon at the Magnificat in the second vespers: O happy Liberata, freed from the savagery of the tyrants! O glorious Wilgefortis, who wast everywhere found strong in the contest! O admirable patroness of the city and diocese of Sigüenza, make us by thy prayers to come to the heavenly joys which thou enjoyest. The prayer finally runs thus: By the prayers and merits of blessed Liberata thy virgin and martyr, we beseech thee, Lord, may we be aided: that she who for the confession of thy name and the defense of modesty hung on the cross, may by her protection defend us from the snares of our enemies. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.
[29] the new lessons The people of Sigüenza describe the life and martyrdom of their patroness in the lessons of the second Nocturn thus: Lesson IV. Lucius Catellius Severus, president of Galicia and Portugal, and kinglet of that land, a worshipper of idols, by Calsia his consort, devoted to the same false religion, brought forth at one birth (as the tradition of many churches in Spain bears) nine daughters. And since she thought that this could raise against her some suspicion of a violated bed and intemperate life, she severely charged the midwife secretly to cast that troop of so many daughters into the river. But she, detesting the counsel, having gone forth into the neighboring village, delivered the nine girls to as many nurses to be reared; by whom, cleansed at the sacred font, and named Genivera, Wilgefortis or Liberata, Victoria, Eumelia, Germana, Gemma, Martia, Basilissa, and Quiteria, they consecrated themselves wholly to God by a vow of virginity conceived.
[30] Lesson V. Meanwhile a dire persecution was pressing the Christian name, from the ancient ones and having come to Balchagia the seat of Catelius (which today is called
Bayona of Tuy) impelled the worshippers of idols to seize the sacred Virgins, and to set them before Catellius their father to be punished. He, having inquired of their family and religion, learned that they were Christians and his daughters. And when he promised them all things with royal liberality, and threatened all punishments with the severity of a judge, to draw them away from the zeal of the Christian religion, and the mother's prayers and tears were added to all these, nevertheless the sacred virgins all remained constant in the faith which they had received.
[31] Lesson VI. But when the father profited nothing, and was carried by fury to the slaughter of his daughters, they differ much. they, although desirous of martyrdom, yet wishing to avoid the grave sin of their father, resolved to withdraw themselves from his power, which they did not all together, but apart, slipping away one one way, another another, where in various places they underwent martyrdom. But Wilgefortis or Liberata with other Christians withdrew into the desert, where living most austerely, she was refreshed with woodland food once daily toward evening; until, seized again by the impious worshippers of idols, she was incited to the sacrilegious worship of idols and to unchastity; but she, neither struck down by the slaughter of her sisters, nor deterred by threats or tortures, offered herself gladly to the tormentors. And after various kinds of torments, contending in Portugal at Castraleuca for faith and modesty, on the cross she deserved to attain the palm of martyrdom, about the year of the Lord one hundred and thirty-nine: whose body, honorably laid up in the most ample temple of Sigüenza, is worshipped with the highest religion and frequency of the peoples.
[32] What the more prudent Spaniards judge of this history I shall indicate in few words. [To the Acts contained in the Sigüenza Breviary Ambrosio Morales does not much defer,] Ambrosio Morales, narrating certain things of St. Liberata in the General Chronicle of Spain book 10 chapter 18, thus speaks in Spanish: Thus far reaches the history of that Saint related in the Lessons and Office, in which certain exotic things are narrated, which he who wishes will be able to see there: for I in all of it see no reason of example, doctrine, or certainty which invites me to write it. In the whole history it is never expressly said that this Saint was Spanish, nor do I see any other manner in which this can be proved. Morales here speaks of the ancient Sigüenza lessons, in which no express mention was made of Portugal: nay, Balthasar Porreño confesses, in the Life of St. Liberata page 58, that in the time of Frederick of Portugal, who from the year 1512 to 1532 held the see of Sigüenza, she was not yet acknowledged as Portuguese, because in her Legend she was only said to be born of her father Cathelius and mother Calsia, gentile kinglets among the not lowest borderers of the West.
[33] Francisco Padilla, writing of St. Liberata and her sisters in the Ecclesiastical History of Spain part I, Francisco Padilla, century 4 chapter 26, has this: Of these Saints write Basilius Sanctorus, Ambrosio de Morales, Doctor Villegas, and Juan de Marieta, who (the last, namely) wove a long history of them, and I know not whence he took it. I should be glad if he had indicated it, as he is wont, when he writes of other Saints: for he generally is wont to put in the margin the authors who write of them; but here he does not put them. Nor are certain things probable which he narrates of these Saints, and so they do not seem to me worthy to be put in this history… The aforesaid Basilius says that Catelius the father of these Saints was a certain notable man in the land of Bolcagia. And certainly so it must have been, because at that time there was no king in Spain. But as to what pertains to the name of Bolcagia; neither in a lexicon, nor in any cosmographer whether ancient or modern, could I find what that place of Bolcagia is; and so I shall not be able to give an account of it. Then, having set forth the life and translation of St. Liberata, he says among other things this: The certainty which we have that this Saint is Spanish is placed in this, that her body exists in Spain, which suffices to grant her a place in our history, even if she had not been born in this region.
[34] and Nicolás Antonio, Nicolás Antonio, in the posthumous manuscripts most kindly communicated to me by the Reverend Don Adrian Coninck, a kinsman of the author, at Madrid in the year 1721, discourses thus of this Saint: Nor is it certain, although the lessons of the Sigüenza Breviary tend hither, that we celebrate a Spanish martyr; since by the monuments of this fostering church it is not obscurely made manifest that the body of the martyr Liberata was translated to it from outside, from Florence, by the work of Simon Giron the prelate, about the year one thousand three hundred; whose translation-feast it celebrates on 15 July. Whether thence to us, what were once by us translated into Italy, the pledges of the native Martyr were brought, it is not my mind either to affirm or deny. That certainly by others not only the Spanish birth of this Saint was called into doubt, but roundly denied, is clear from the refutation of Don Prudentius de Sandoval, bishop of Tuy, who in the book on the antiquity of the city and church of Tuy, after having exhibited the ancient lessons of the church of Sigüenza page 41, thus refutes certain persons: Villegas erred in saying that these Saints were Gallic, which is the same error into which fell the authors who reformed the Breviary of Pamplona, which asserts the same. Let him who will reconcile these two Breviaries with each other. I do not embroil myself in this dispute.
[35] from which last an objection is met, Perhaps someone here will bring an argument which I remember was often objected to me while engaged in the cause of the Saints in Spain; namely that for historical certainty the authority of the Breviary suffices. Let him, besides other things said on this matter in the Papebrochian Responses, have the answer of the most learned Spaniard, Nicolás Antonio, I mean, who in the posthumous manuscripts just cited, on occasion of St. Epitacius, celebrated in the Placentine Breviary, defends himself in a like cause in these words: Nor oppose to me that the sacred Congregation of Rites, at the instance of the church of Placencia, and of the most excellent man Don Diego de Arce Reinoso, Inquisitor General of the Spains, its bishop, approved the lesson of the solemn Office which that church now uses of St. Epitacius, in which he is said to have been bishop of Ambracia the most ancient city of the Spains, appointed by Peter of Rota. For that the sacred Congregation of Rites has indulged the piety of the faithful most instantly supplicating is not so much to be objected to us as to be imputed to the credulous and little cautious piety of the faithful, who, without the most exact examination of the matter, are wont imprudently to stuff their petitions with traditions and writers born yesterday and the day before, and from that sacred congregation, which is wont to defer not a little to the traditions of the churches, to obtain, and, to say more truly, to extort them; to which, when weighed to the touchstone of a sound and refined judgment, lest it pronounce against itself, truth denies its testimony.
[36] If anyone does not acquiesce in this answer, let him hear the most eminent Cardinal Vincenzo Maria Orsini, which answer is confirmed by the opinion of Benedict XIII the Supreme Pontiff. then archbishop of Benevento; but now, under the name of Benedict XIII, Supreme Pontiff of the Roman church, who in a most learned dissertation on the relics of St. Bartholomew vindicated for Benevento, article 7, thus resolves a like argument: I answer first, that the Roman Breviary is indeed of the greatest authority in those things which of themselves pertain to the ecclesiastical cult; but of less weight in private facts or deeds which in the Life of the Saints are reported on occasion, so that an effectual argument cannot thence be sought, especially where more ancient monuments are opposed. For neither does the Church itself, which uses them, judge whatever is inserted into its Breviaries to be of unshaken and infallible truth, since many times, according to various times, it has on occasion changed and corrected them. Then, having cited certain councils which decree the correction of the Breviary, he thus concludes: All which things are an argument that the Breviaries are not straightway to be thought free from all historical aberration, but generally need a great sponge, although the Church employs them for its own use. Nay, that the Clementine-Urban Breviary, which we use, is not altogether free from its own blemishes, the most learned explorers of the histories indicate. Finally the same passes the same judgment on the Roman Martyrology, in which he detects certain errors by adduced examples, to which I remit the curious reader.
§ IV. The various opinions of authors concerning the Acts of Liberata of Sigüenza.
[37] That in this confused variety of writers we may preserve at least some order, first concerning the parents of St. Liberata, Various opinions are proposed then concerning certain circumstances of her life, and finally concerning the place, time, and kind of the martyrdom, let us disclose the various opinions. As for what pertains to the parents, in the ancient Sigüenza lessons in Prudentius Sandoval cited above, blessed Liberata is said to be born of her father Castellius and mother Calsia, gentile kinglets among the borderers of the West: but in the new lessons of the church of Sigüenza her father is called Lucius Catellius Severus, president of Galicia and Portugal and kinglet of that land. Of the title and name of this kinglet John Tamayo discourses at more length in the Spanish Martyrology on 18 January, where he thinks he should be named Caius Atilius Severus. But if only there be agreement about the matter, we shall not quarrel about the name.
[38] In assigning the time and situation of the kingdom of this kinglet Catellius, an ancient manuscript codex of our Museum, marked ✠ Ms. 40, much differs from the rest, concerning the parents of St. Liberata, in whose beginning it is noted that it came to us from Rouge-Cloître near Brussels. It thus begins the Passion of St. Quiteria: There was a certain great king over all the Orientals, Catillius by name, having a wife named Alfia of the stock of the emperor Julian. These begot nine daughters and one son, who all suffered death for the Catholic faith. At the end of the Passion these things are read: But St. Quiteria suffered in Gascony near the city of Aire on the 11th day before the Kalends of June in the year of the Lord four hundred and seventy-seven. The mother of these daughters, who by most is called Calsia, and in the cited codex Alfia, is by the Pseudo-Julian called Quiteria, and indeed is referred into the number of the Saints. Hear himself in the Chronicle number 57 pronouncing thus as from a tripod: Of St. Quiteria were born these divine sisters Genivera, Victoria, Eumelia, Grimana, Gemina, Martiana, Quiteria, Basilisa, Vulgefortis or Liberata, at one birth in a city of Galicia called Beleagra, which is now called Baiona, near the city called Tuy. How shall this mother St. Quiteria be reconciled with the Calsia of the Sigüenza Breviary? But I leave this care to the interpreters of Julian.
[39] and their fictitious apotheosis is exploded, We have seen the mother of St. Liberata referred by the Pseudo-Julian into the number of the Saints; now let us also see her father ascribed by the same Julian to the catalogue of the martyrs. It is credible, he says in the Adversaria number 250, that the parents of so many virgins and martyrs obtained pardon and salvation from God, and that Severus suffered in Spain under the persecution of Antoninus with a certain centurion on 20 August. The impostor namely looked to
the holy Martyrs Severus and Memnon, who are celebrated by the Greeks on 20 August, and tried to drag them into the Spanish city of Deobriga, as is sufficiently clear in his Chronicle number 400, where he thus writes: At Deobriga, of St. Severus and Menonius under Valerian Augustus. Namely, by errors and solecisms composed on purpose, he wished to counterfeit antiquity. But did he think all posterity would be so stupid as, without a fitting witness, to believe that Catellius Severus under Antoninus, or St. Severus a Greek martyr with his companion Memnon under Valerian, suffered in Spain? It is a great art, though a bad one, to feign many things consistently. So open is this imposture of the Pseudo-Julian, that John Tamayo, wont to swear by his words, is here partly compelled to desert his dear guide in deceiving, as is clear in the Spanish Martyrology on 20 August from his notes: for treating of SS. Severus and Memnon as Spanish martyrs he writes the following: Although in the reported authors the place of the arena is by no means assigned, yet Julian the archpriest of Toledo pointed it out in the Chronicle number 400, in these words: At Deobriga, of SS. Severus and Memnon under Valerian Augustus. Which opinion is to be embraced, and not admitted that other stuffed together by him in the Adversaria number 250 folio 57, by which he believed this Severus to have been the father of SS. Quiteria and the other eight Virgins of Galicia. Let these things said of the parents of St. Liberata suffice.
[40] After these things, in the very name of the Martyr of whom we treat, as also of the nurse Sila. and in other circumstances of lighter moment, there occurs a certain discrepancy which we shall here briefly note. In the ancient Lessons of this Martyr she was called only Liberata; but in the more recent she is called Wilgefortis or Liberata. I know not from what author this doubled name passed into the new Office of the church of Sigüenza, unless perhaps from the Pseudo-Dexter, who among writers both Spanish and Portuguese first, as far as I know, doubled the name of St. Liberata. But of this matter an opportune occasion of speaking will recur afterward. On the contrary, the name of Sila, who is said to have been the midwife or nurse of the nine sisters, expressed in the ancient Sigüenza Breviary, is, I know not for what cause, omitted in the new. Certainly that name could be honorably set down, if faith is to be given to Julian, who in the Adversaria number 317 as an eyewitness testifies that he was near the temple where her body was kept. She is believed, he says there, to have been the virgin who bore and reared the holy virgins and martyrs, sisters, St. Quiteria, Liberata, and the other Portuguese women. The anniversary of her martyrdom is worshipped on the Kalends of November. She is believed to have suffered not long after those virgins suffered. John Tamayo, always prompt to multiply the Saints of Spain, seized this testimony with both hands, as they say, and, relying on the authority of that Pseudo-writer alone, intruded Sila on 1 November into his Spanish Martyrology. Whether such saints, unknown to all historians and martyrologists, who are canonized only in some pseudo-chronicle, are to be worshipped in the church, I leave to the holy See to judge.
[41] The Portuguese writers narrate in these Acts of the nine sisters certain circumstances Besides other differing circumstances of the Acts which I do not everywhere find among the Spaniards. First of all George Cardoso, who adorns St. Liberata and her sisters with a more florid than solid elogium, in the Portuguese Hagiology on 18 January says that they were baptized by St. Ovidius archbishop of Braga and instructed in the Christian faith. Of this spiritual father and holy teacher of the faith there is among the Spaniards, at least those I have read, deep silence; nay, in the Sigüenza Lessons, both ancient and modern, they are said to have been cleansed at the sacred font by their nurses. Ludovicus dos Anjos, in his Portuguese Garden section 6, calls St. Liberata a teacher of the Christian faith, and foundress of the solitary life in Portugal. Roderick da Cunha, in the Ecclesiastical History in the place cited above, reports something peculiar, namely that St. Liberata was by her father Caius Atilius exposed to the ignominious lasciviousness of unchaste men; but that she, fortified by divine aid, valiantly defended herself from their violence. That this public ignominy was inflicted on St. Liberata by her own parent, I do not remember to have hitherto read in any of her Acts.
[42] Concerning the place which St. Liberata consecrated with her blood, concerning the place of the martyrdom, there is no less dispute: for not even among the pseudo-chronicles themselves is there agreement about it. Dexter at the year of Christ 138 says: Wilgefortis or Liberata, daughter of Catelius kinglet of the Portuguese, suffered at Amphilochium. But Julian in his chronicle number 83: At Mons Calensis near Castra Leuca in Portugal St. Wilgefortis, who is called also Cometiensis and Liberata, for the defense of faith and modesty is put upon a cross, and her neck being cut, accomplished a most glorious triumph over the fierce tyrant. Bivarius, in his Commentary on this place of Dexter, setting himself as judge between these two, delivers this definitive sentence against Julian: Dexter surely is to be heard before Julian. We shall not much dispute which is to be preferred to the other; because with us each deserves equal, that is, no faith. The ancient Sigüenza Lessons do not distinctly express the arena of the martyrdom; but the new ones assert that she suffered in Portugal at Castraleuca, for which Bivarius thinks Castralaelia should be read. I omit the various and uncertain interpretations of others, and the fables written under the name of Laimundus, of which Portuguese pseudo-historian see the judgment of Nicolás Antonio in the ancient Spanish Library book 6 chapter 4.
[43] Nor do the writers agree more among themselves concerning the time of the Passion. The new Sigüenza Lessons, the ancient again being silent, will have it as to the time that St. Liberata obtained the palm of martyrdom about the year of the Lord one hundred and thirty-nine. Alfonso Chacón, in the little book which he wrote on the Martyrdom of the two hundred Monks of St. Peter of Cardeña, enumerating the martyrs who suffered under the persecution of Diocletian, among others reports St. Liberata in these words: Two holy virgin sisters, Liberata and Quiteria, affected with martyrdom at different times; Liberata indeed on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of February, but Quiteria on the eleventh day before the Kalends of June. But Quiteria our manuscript codex cited above makes more than a hundred and fifty years later than the Diocletian persecution, which says that St. Quiteria suffered in Gascony near the city of Aire on the 11th day before the Kalends of June in the year of the Lord four hundred and seventy-seven. That Bernardo de Brito, the Portuguese historiographer, maintains another opinion concerning the time of the martyrdom, I gather from our Antonio Vasconcellos, who after narrating the history of the holy nine sisters, in the Description of the Portuguese kingdom printed at Antwerp page 447, subjoins this: Of these sacred Martyrs wrote Ambrosio Morales book X chapter XVIII; Villegas, who ascribes them for no cause to Gaul; and also Friar Bernardo de Brito part II of the Portuguese Monarchy book I chapter XVIII. Yet in two things he is greatly deceived; namely in the age, since he makes them a hundred and forty years more recent than they really were; and in the country, when he denies that they were of Braga. It is not worth the trouble to investigate the differing opinions of others: for from modern writers we shall extract nothing certain concerning a martyrdom accomplished so many years ago.
[44] and the kind Last in this paragraph there remain certain things to be said concerning the kind of the martyrdom. In the Lessons from the ancient Sigüenza and Palencia Breviary reported in Bivarius in the commentary on Dexter the following are read: All the sisters, therefore, being dismissed to the kingdoms of heaven, at last blessed Liberata, tortured with many torments, since she could not be plucked from the faith, migrated to the Lord by the cutting off of her head. The same opinion followed F. Thomas de Trujillo in the Treasury of preachers cited above, Basilius Sanctorus in the Lives of the Saints on 18 January, Juan Marieta in his Ecclesiastical History of all the Saints of Spain published at Cuenca in the year 1596 book 4 chapter 16, Ambrosio de Morales in the General Chronicle of Spain book 10 chapter 18, Francisco de Padilla in the Ecclesiastical History of Spain century 4 chapter 26, Alfonso de Villegas in the Flower of the Saints printed at Zaragoza in the year 1626, who, treating of the feasts of the Saints of Spain on 18 January folio 399, at the end of the Acts of St. Liberata of Sigüenza adds that mention is made of her in the Roman Martyrology. But in this he is deceived, because that Martyrology on 18 January speaks only of St. Liberata virgin at Como: unless one would excuse him, that with Roderick da Cunha archbishop of Braga and others he thought the Sigüenza relics to pertain to Liberata of Como; concerning which matter enough has been treated above.
[45] Against this torrent of the ancient Spaniards is borne the new Office of the church of Sigüenza, which, different things are reported. no mention being made of the beheading, only says that St. Liberata after various torments deserved to attain the palm of martyrdom on the cross. To this new opinion the way was prepared by the Pseudo-Dexter, who first also endowed St. Liberata with the name of Wilgefortis, who according to the Roman Martyrology, contending in Portugal for the Christian faith and modesty, on the cross deserved to obtain a glorious triumph. Since therefore St. Liberata was said in the older Breviaries and Spanish historians to be beheaded; but holy Wilgefortis was written in the additions of Molanus and the Roman Martyrology to be crucified, something had to be found by which these two kinds of punishment might agree with one and the same martyr already confounded by the Pseudo-Dexter. The Pseudo-Dexter, content to have laid the foundation of this new opinion, did not express the manner of the martyrdom, but left this part of the fable to his companion (unless perhaps it be the same Proteus, who under different forms corrupted Spanish history), the Pseudo-Julian, to adorn. He, therefore, as a reinforcement to Dexter, in the Chronicle number 83 thus fits this double punishment to the same person: At Mons Calensis, he says, near Castra Leuca in Portugal St. Wilgefortis, who is called also Cometiensis and Liberata, for the defense of faith and modesty is put upon a cross, and her neck being cut, accomplished a most glorious triumph over the fierce tyrant. Behold a new document concerning St. Liberata unknown to the ancient Spaniards. If anyone desires to see it more fully explained, let him go to Bivarius, who in the Commentary on the chronicle of Flavius Lucius Dexter at the year of Christ 138 defends this fiction of the Pseudo-Julian subtly enough. We meanwhile hasten to the cult wont to be exhibited to St. Liberata, or rather Wilgefortis, in Belgium.
§ V. The cult of St. Liberata or Wilgefortis in Belgium.
The Belgians worship a certain St. Liberata or Liberatrix, virgin and martyr, whom they also call Wilgefortis and Oncommera. A certain Belgian effigy of St. Wilgefortis The common tradition among them is, as I said above, that she was the daughter of a certain Portuguese king, who, being about to be given in marriage to the king of Sicily, obtained from Christ such a change of her face that her spouse abhorred her. Wherefore, since a manly beard had grown forth on her by divine power, she was hung on a cross by her angry and gentile parent. This is the sum of the tradition; according to which in certain churches of Belgium she is thus depicted.
[47] Altogether similar to this little picture is the image of St. Wilgefortis, which Don Lorenzo Ramírez de Prado, G. C., asserts that he found at Madrid, by Bivarius, and which he inserted into the Adversaria of the Pseudo-Julian published by him after page 54. But of it Francisco Bivarius judges far otherwise, where on page 16, having spoken of St. Paula virgin of Ávila commonly called Barbata, he subjoins this: Our Ramírez produced an image of St. Liberata, patroness of the people of Sigüenza (concerning whom we said many things with Dexter at the year of Christ 138), affixed to a cross, with a manly face comely with a long beard, with this inscription: "St. Wilgefortis, otherwise Liberata, whom the Belgians from the driving away of cares name Ontcommera; daughter of the king of Portugal. After she had asked Christ her spouse to be disfigured, lest she should be sought by a lover for marriage, and so a beard had suddenly grown forth on her, for the defense of the Christian religion and of modesty she was affixed to a cross, most famous even today for miracles; and this among the rest, that her image, by the shaking off of one silver boot, declared the innocence of a certain harp-player condemned to death and fleeing to her patronage." But Ramírez by no means gives credit to this history: nor is it wonderful, since that image is not of Liberata, but of the glorious crucified Lord, held in great veneration of the people at Lucca a city of Italy; inasmuch as it happened by his living virtue that he shook off a silver shoe of one foot to an innocent man or a poor man. But of Liberata none of the writers ever, even lightly, produced anything concerning a beard miraculously arising on her, unless perhaps (which now occurs) they called our Paula Liberata on account of the liberation from the beard miraculously granted her, and the common people confounded her in name with Wilgefortis.
[48] and by Baron Blun she is believed to be the same This opinion of Bivarius the most learned and noble Don Henry Julius Baron of Blun confirms, in letters given at Prague in the year 1687 to Papebroch, in which of the crucified effigy of Wilgefortis he passes this judgment: For several years now I have frequently inquired whence the cult of this Saint could take its origin, but I found nothing at all to the purpose. I thought indeed at first that it represented Wilgefortis, the royal virgin of Portugal, of whom the Roman Martyrology makes mention on 20 July: but since this very history does not seem sufficiently certain, because the name is not Spanish, and no author mentions gentile kings in Portugal, I suspected at last that both Wilgefortis herself, which seems rather to be a Belgian name, and St. Kummernissa, as she is commonly called, represent the effigy of the most holy Crucified, which is worshipped at Lucca in Italy for several centuries, and which is ascribed to Nicodemus. I myself beheld it more than thirty years ago, when I was traveling through Italy; and of it Angelo Rocca treats at length in the book which he published at Rome in the year 1609 on a particle of the most holy cross. That the images of St. Wilgefortis or Kummernissa are no other than of this Crucified, which is worshipped at Lucca with ancient veneration, this above all persuades me, that on all the images of St. Wilgefortis and Kummernissa there is seen painted a harp-player, to whom, oppressed with hardships and want, she held forth one of the golden sandals. But these very things are taken from the history of this Crucified.
[49] When I had read these things, I resolved to inquire further into the image of Christ crucified which is preserved at Lucca in Etruria, with the image of Christ crucified, at Lucca in Tuscany. and behold, among the first pages of the book which the most illustrious and reverend Don F. Angelo Rocca bishop of Tagaste composed on a particle of the most sacred Cross, I behold it depicted. Then turning over his commentary page 40 I read this description of that effigy, which is said to have been painted by Nicodemus: That image, which is preserved at Lucca as if living, is seen affixed to the Cross; having a beard of the color of hazel, that is somewhat yellow, like the hair, not long, but in the extreme part gradually divided in two… The shoes of that same image are of silver, but gilded, marked with a cross, of which the right one that same image is narrated to have miraculously cast to a certain man, praying for help to be obtained for himself. Then, to support that shoe (the heel being bare, which could never receive the shoe), an unconsecrated chalice was placed, as to this day is seen there; and the price of the shoe was given to that man imploring the Crucified.
[50] I confess that this image of Christ crucified at Lucca, except for the form of the crown and garments, But that the manner of painting depends on the arbitrary choice of the painters does not much differ from the little picture of St. Wilgefortis already exhibited; nay, that the miracle reported by the most illustrious Angelo Rocca is not so unlike that which is commonly wont to be narrated in Belgium concerning the harp-player fleeing to the help of St. Wilgefortis. But I think that these things depend on the arbitrary choice of the painter, who, ordered to depict the crucified virgin martyr with a manly form, perhaps imitated that Lucca prototype, because he had heard from certain Acts that she prayed to become like Christ her crucified spouse, and thus disfigured might preserve her virginity unstained. Be that as it may, in the manner above engraved on copper, says the Reverend Don Augustine Wichmann in his Marian Brabant book 3 chapter 5, she is seen in most of the rural churches of Brabant, as also at Louvain in the porch of the chief church, where she has a peculiar altar, as also in the village of Alphen near Breda, which even today is frequented and I saw honored with offerings, though it is nearly collapsed. But in Waerle near Eindhoven, a village, she has a sacred sodality and was formerly wont to be visited with a celebrated concourse of pilgrims, and with great fruit and relief of the same before the recent iconoclasm. Whether in these places of Brabant the cult of our Saint still perseveres, I know not. At least I now understand that her altar at Louvain no longer exists.
[51] I said that this manner of painting depends on the arbitrary choice of the painter: is clear from another effigy. for a far unlike image of the crucified Wilgefortis our Bartholomew Ricci exhibits in his Triumph of Jesus Christ crucified on 20 July page 45. There the Martyr, clad in a woman's garment, and crowned with a royal crown, is depicted with a longer beard than in the other little pictures, and the cross, to which she is nailed while not yet raised, is lifted on high by the ministers of the punishment. Much from this and the other images differs the wooden statue of the same holy Martyr, which in the year 1722 I saw at Mechelen in the hospital of the virgins whom we in Belgium commonly call Beguines. In this statue the holy Virgin is indeed represented affixed to a cross already raised, but beardless, as is clear from the little picture below, engraved on copper according to that exemplar. This statue of holy Wilgefortis, from the ancient Beguinage which was formerly situated in the suburb of Mechelen, and in the sixteenth century in the Belgian tumults was burned, was carried into the city and placed in the hospital of the present Beguinage, to which pious veneration is exhibited, and by a common name she is called the virgin of the sick. But the elder Beguines narrate, and among them one 98 years old, that by the intercession of that holy Martyr certain miracles were wrought, which, once consigned to writing, either perished, or at least could not be found. And let these things concerning the discrepancy of the pictures here suffice. For it matters little in what manner she is painted. Let us pursue the Belgian cult of this Saint.
[52] Some assert that at Brussels are the relics of St. Wilgefortis, First of all, that in the noble city of Brussels, before in the year 1695 a great part of it was burned by engines of war, the relics of our Saint existed, and that she was held under the name of Ontcommera in public veneration, is clear from a letter which the priests of the chapel of the most holy Virgin Mary commonly called Auxiliatrix sent to us in the year 1706. This runs thus: At Brussels in the chapel of the Virgin Auxiliatrix the sacred remains of the holy Virgin were publicly exposed to veneration before the city was destroyed by bombs; but consumed in the common ruin they no longer exist. These remains, moreover, together with the image, were wont to be carried about every year in the procession of St. James the Greater, patron of our chapel, with a vast concourse of the people. But our hermit, a man worthy of credit, asserts to us that he often read, subscribed in Flemish to the shrine bearing the statue of the Virgin projecting halfway: Here rest the Relics of holy Ontcommera, a patroness fit for curing the dropsical. Finally, on her feast on 20 July, perpetual indulgences were granted to our chapel by Urban VIII Supreme Pontiff.
[53] and that at Steenbergen her sepulchre existed. In the town of Steenbergen, now subject to the dominion of the Dutch, some would have it that our Saint was formerly invoked with catholic rite, nay also buried. That report, though uncertain, moved us to write to Father Peter Idiers, a priest of our Society, at that time a missionary in Zeeland, that we might learn what there was of this matter. That missionary answered in the year 1707 in this manner: At Steenbergen I inquired concerning St. Ontcommera formerly worshipped there; but there are now scarcely any vestiges of a notice except the name alone, which the burgomaster of the town, my friend, pointed out to me in his territory, Sinte Ontcommerspolder; neither the priest nor the Catholics anything further. Truly it is not wonderful that the cult and memory of this Saint perished there, since John Baptist Gramaye in the Antiquities of Breda chapter 19 writes the following concerning this town, once celebrated, of Brabant: The fire of the year 1363, raging through the whole city, and in such a way that no house survived free from the disaster, buried in ashes the memory of Steenbergen's felicity. And chapter 22: It seems also from the ancient rescripts of the Dukes of Brabant and the Lords of Breda that that town sustained no mean calamities from fire, water, and plague, so that scarcely a vestige of its ancient splendor, if there was any, is seen. Add that the Calvinist heresy abolished the remaining cult, if any survived.
[54] The cult of the same Saint was extended through various villages of Belgium, She is worshipped in various villages of Belgium, some of which, which have come to my notice, I shall here enumerate. The Reverend Father John Braze, Rector of our college of Cassel, wrote thus to Father Janning in the year 1706 from Cassel: At Terdeghem, which is a village distant three quarters of an hour hence, there was found a side altar of the church, on which is erected a picture of that Saint, as it is described in the schedule inserted here (he had sent along the Life of St. Wilgefortis from the Geel codex published by Augustine Wichmann), which was kept by the Dean of Christianity at Steenvoorde. There was formerly in the aforesaid village a confraternity of the divine Wilgefortis, but dissolved easily forty years ago without any other documents; so that they know neither the day nor the manner in which she was worshipped. That the same Saint was wont to be honored in Waelre a village of Brabant, the Reverend Don Servatius Nieuwenhuysen, pastor of Helmond, attests, who in letters given to us in the year 1712 has among other things this: I often saw the very image, bearded,
and, as it appeared, quite ancient, in the time of the preceding pastor. I understood then also that it was greatly frequented by the neighbors, especially in catholic times. Whether and how that cult perseveres I know not: for the parish priest of that place did not deign to answer my repeated letters.
[55] More kindly did two parish priests in the territory of Aalst deal with us, and especially at Velzeke, of whom one, namely the Reverend Don Schuurmans, pastor at Velzeke, a village of Flanders situated between Aalst and Oudenaarde, in letters given in the year 1706 answers to our queries in this manner: To satisfy your pious petition concerning the cult of St. Wilgefortis, I answer that it is true that the said holy Virgin and martyr is here specially worshipped; and that here she is called Wilgefortis, Oncommena, and Liberata; and that here is a special altar consecrated to her in the northern part of the church, moreover that there is an image of her, and in the altar a picture, in which she is represented affixed to a cross, not indeed with nails, but bound with cords on hands and feet. Her feast is here worshipped on the fourth day of February both by the people and by the clergy. Moreover throughout the whole year she is often worshipped by the surrounding parishes and also by the inhabitants of this place, by offering some live heart (as it is here called), that is, a living animal, doves, hens, chickens, and the like; and this to this end, that the sick set in the straits of death may be relieved, from whose cult many are said to find comfort. Likewise she is here worshipped by the inhabitants, who, praying, go round a certain way here called the Ommeganck (that is, the circuit) of St. Oncommena. As for certain miracles, those I would not dare to bring forward as certain: for although certain sick persons who had vowed to exhibit a special cult to the said Saint recovered, yet it is uncertain whether it happened by the virtue of medicines or from elsewhere.
[56] As for the notice of her Life, here the tradition is that she was the daughter of the king of Portugal, where her Relics exist. who, for the sake of making peace, was given by her father as a bride to the king of Sicily. Who, as soon as she knew her father's intention, prayed Christ the Lord to deign to send upon her such a deformity, by which she should appear so disfigured that her spouse should have a horror of her. And, heard by the Lord God, a beard as quickly grew forth on her chin. Perceiving which, her gentile father put her upon a cross. Further, here the tradition is that she, being put upon the cross, in the midst of her torments prayed the Lord God that she might have such a privilege, that those who invoke her, set in the straits of death, might find comfort. For the rest, she is depicted bearded on the chin with a crown on her head, which two angels support. As for the relics, we have here two parts approved by the ordinary, long to about half an inch, thick to about two fingers, besides another small part, which from time immemorial is here in the church. Thus he, whose diligence in giving exact notice of his Saints would that others might imitate!
[57] approved by letters testimonial. Afterward in the year 1722, by the care and diligence of the Very Reverend Don Benedict de Ruddere, canon of Mechelen, I received an authentic testimony concerning the Velzeke relics, which, given in the year 1670, runs thus: Amatus Coriache, priest, canon, archdeacon of the metropolitan church of Mechelen and vicar general of the same vacant see, to all who shall see these, greeting in the Lord. Whereas it is established to us by testimonies worthy of faith that two parts of the relics of St. Oncomena or Wilgefortis were for very many years kept in the chapel of the blessed Virgin Mary de Successu in the town of Brussels, and were exposed to the public cult and veneration of Christ's faithful, and have now first been delivered into the hands of the venerable lord Thomas Verbesselt, pastor at Velzeke, of the district of Oordegem, at the supplication of the said lord pastor of Velzeke, in which place the parish church is consecrated in honor of the same Saint, we approve the same relics, and permit the same relics in the said place and church to be exposed to the veneration of Christ's faithful. In faith and strength of which we have given these present at Mechelen on the last day of the month of September in the year of the Lord 1670. This autograph instrument is kept in the archive of Velzeke, which the Reverend Don Vander Eecken, parish priest of that village, transcribed, whose copy he attests to agree with the original on 23 August in the year 1722.
[58] The cult of the same in other places of Flanders, Brabant, Another parish priest in the same territory of Aalst is the Reverend Don John Charles Broeckmans, who in a letter given to us in the year 1706 signifies this: In my church of Baveghem there is worshipped St. Wilgefortis under the name of Ontkommera, painted, affixed to a cross with a beard on the chin like a man, with a golden crown on the head and feminine garments. She is worshipped on the eighth day of October, a feast among the people, with a great concourse of foreigners. That the same St. Wilgefortis has not far from Louvain a chapel dedicated to her cult I gather from Augustine Wichmann cited above, who in his Marian Brabant book 3 chapter 5 writes the following: Vlierbeek is situated about half a mile from Louvain outside the Diest gate, on whose road a chapel is seen, sacred to a certain holy virgin, but not so known to all. Of whom, because through Brabant and especially our whole Campine she has very many statues and altars, I have thought I should here treat in three words, with the reader's good leave, who will take this little digression in good part; especially since she consecrated her virginity to the heavenly spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for which also she willingly lost her life. She is that virgin and martyr Bl. Wilgefortis, but to us Brabanters Oncommera, in the vernacular Sinte Ontcommer, whose life receive thus briefly from a manuscript codex, sent to me from Geel, containing the Lives of the saints. Here he subjoins the Acts, which differ nothing or little from the common ones, of which afterward more fully.
[59] It is also worthy of note that Father Angelinus Gazaeus of our Society, and of Hainaut. a man known by published books, wrote many years ago to our Elders from Valenciennes, a famous city of Hainaut: There are worshipped, he says, in a village neighboring on us and distant no more than half a mile from this city, St. Colpinus and St. Wilgefortis. The village is named Onnaing, whither, to implore their help, very many flow together from every quarter, even from France itself, but especially from Hainaut. The day before yesterday I went to the place itself, to inquire what Saints there were, and for what they are worshipped. Under the very choir of the church I found a crypt, where there is an altar, and on it two wooden images without any relics of those saints. St. Colpinus is painted nearly like St. James; he has an apostolic garment and a pilgrim's staff, to which a wallet is hung. His head is covered with a broad hat, but without the sea-shell, as St. James is wont to have. St. Wilfordis is affixed to a cross, but clothed and crowned, and, what thou mayest wonder at, bearded. They are worshipped especially for sickly children, for others also who are swollen; and indeed both are worshipped indifferently. I inquired of the pastor whether anything was written concerning their Life or other things. He denied that anything is found, and that, as is probable, by the fault of the wars. Enclosed in the letter was a leaden medal, on one part of which is seen St. Colpinus in the manner above described; but on the other part St. Wilgefortis, with these characters added, S. WILFOR, is exhibited crucified. I think these medals are distributed to the faithful flowing together thither.
[60] These things concerning the Belgian cult of St. Wilgefortis being collected, I found a manuscript Mass concerning the same Saint, An ancient Mass of St. Wilgefortis of what time or place I shall not easily say. Since, however, the character is Belgian, I suspect that it was formerly recited in Belgium, and therefore I subjoin it to this Belgian cult. The title is: Mass of holy Wilgefortis virgin and martyr, whose feast is celebrated on the 20th day of July. She was the daughter of a certain gentile king of Portugal, crucified by him for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified, her spouse. Introit. The sinners waited for me, etc. Collect. O God, in honor of whose holy name blessed Wilgefortis virgin and martyr triumphed by the martyrdom of the cross, grant, we beseech, that we who frequent her commemoration with pious devotion and honor, may by her merits and prayers be snatched from all necessity and peril of soul and body, and led to eternal joys. Lesson from the book of wisdom. I will confess to thee, O Lord king, etc. Gospel: The kingdom of heaven is like to a treasure hidden in a field, etc. The rest which follow in this Mass contain nothing peculiar.
§ VI. The cult of the same Saint in Germany and other parts of Europe.
Very many Germans venerate St. Wilgefortis with catholic rite, and in their tongue properly call her Ohnkummer or Ohnkummernus, and generally for brevity's sake Kummernus. The German name of the Saint is explained, But lest perhaps these German names delay anyone, I briefly explain them. The German name ohnkummer or ohnkummernus is compounded of the preposition ohn, that is, without, and the substantive kummer or kummernus, which signifies sorrow, anguish, and solicitude; so that ohnkummernus is the same as "without anxiety." Perhaps this etymology takes its origin from the Acts; namely because the holy woman, to preserve her faith or virginity, valiantly underwent martyrdom without sorrow and anguish. Perhaps also this name arose from the effect; because, namely, she is said to free her clients from straits, and thus those imploring her help become without anxiety, according to that which is read to have been promised her from heaven as she prayed last on the cross; namely that they should by her intercession be freed from all troubles and straits and tribulations of heart, body, and spirit. What I think of this clause of the Acts, I shall indicate afterward. So much for the name; now let us come to the matter.
[62] And her cult is shown at Mainz, Fulda, That at Mainz and Fulda a pious cult is exhibited to St. Wilgefortis I understand from a letter of Father Ignatius Dorn of our Society, who in the year 1716 writes, among other things, this: I signify moreover to Your Reverence that at Mainz, and indeed in the Metropolitan church, there is an image of this kind (namely of the crucified virgin with a beard) quite ancient, which is worshipped by the inhabitants of Mainz with a daily and no common devotion: for I scarcely remember to have passed this church at any time when I did not observe one or another, or even several lighted candles before that image; often also there people kneeling and praying; there are seen also hung up certain votive offerings. The subscription, on account of its age, can no longer be read entire. The people indeed know that this crucified virgin with a beard is holy Wilgefortis; yet they call her not otherwise than Sankt Gehülff, that is, properly holy Help; perhaps because she afforded help to several there invoking her. At last, the letter being finished, he subjoins this. P.S. I now hear that also at Fulda there is an image of this kind exposed to public cult in the provostship of the mount of St. Michael.
[63] at Muringen I have with me a German image of the crucified virgin, from which it appears that the same St. Wilgefortis or Kumernissa, the name being somewhat changed, is famous for miracles at Muringen by the Hercynian forest. Here indeed she is painted crowned and bearded, but naked from the head to the navel; the rest of the body is covered with the garment usual to women down to the feet. No harp-player here kneels before her, but on each side of the cross are painted angels who, flying in the air, scatter flowers upon the Martyr. But subscribed to the cross are these words: St. Cumerana virgin and martyr famous for miracles at Muringen by the Hercynian forest. From this picture it is clear that this Saint is depicted not everywhere in the same manner, but, as we said above, according to the arbitrary choice of the painters, and so that there is no danger that she be confounded with the Lucca image of Christ crucified: for in this neither harp-player nor shoes, nor chalice and the other things are painted, which might afford a suspicion of confusion. But the miraculous shaking off of the shoe, which in most images of St. Wilgefortis is expressed as done to the harp-player, in the history of the Lucca Crucified is handed down to have happened to a certain poor man; which distinction of persons seems to indicate a different miracle, although I have no solid reason for affirming it.
[64] I do not doubt that in very many other places of Germany unknown to me our Saint obtains public veneration: and in other places of Germany for that she was known at Emmerich I conjecture from a letter of Father Bartholomew Des Bosses, who in the year 1613 writes thus to our Janning from Paderborn: Concerning St. Wilgefortis I hope Your Reverence received something last year through our Cologne fathers, who had undertaken that province. I had written to Father Ambrose Wirich, Rector of the college of Emmerich, in which city I had understood there was a statue of the said Saint in the crypt of the archidiaconal church of St. Martin. He answered me that the Lords Canons of that church, consulted by him, answered that nothing is found in the archive of their church concerning that Saint. Which answer hints that truly in that crypt there is a statue of this kind, although it is not known on what occasion it came thither. In whatever way these things stand, at least that St. Wilgefortis was formerly honored at Soest I gather from the manuscript Collectanea of Westphalia in us, Codex S number 113, in the beginning of which, where there is treatment of St. Patroclus and the city of Soest, I read the following: An image of St. Wilgefortis crucified with a beard and a shoe, painted on a column in the collegiate church of Soest, with an oblong candelabrum of several candles inserted into the wall itself; which is a sign of votive cult.
[65] Let us proceed into Bohemia, in whose metropolis not many years ago an image of the crucified Wilgefortis was exposed to the public veneration of the faithful: and in places of Bohemia, for the Reverend Father Martin of Bílina, a Capuchin, concerning this image to be erected, if I am not mistaken, first consulted Papebroch by letters given at Prague in the year 1684 in this manner: A certain merchant of Prague, a Belgian by nation, has resolved to erect here at Prague in a certain church an altar of St. Wilgefortis virgin and martyr, whose feast according to the Roman Martyrology falls on the twentieth of July. This Saint, most unknown in the kingdom of Bohemia, seems marvelous to our people, chiefly because, prefiguring her effigy, she is painted a virgin miraculously bearded, hanging on a cross with one golden shoe: for a certain harp-player kneeling before her has the other lying before him, a chalice also is added. This Saint is commonly called Liberata, in German Ohnkummernus, and is said to be greatly worshipped in Belgium. I confess, I have surveyed various books, yet concerning this Saint I found either nothing or very little. Then he asks certain things pertaining to the life and cult of the aforesaid Saint, which, when they had been transmitted by Papebroch to Prague, the same Father Martin, in letters given about the end of the same year, most kindly gave thanks.
[66] and that effigy of Prague is exhibited. I scarcely doubt that this is the same effigy of which in the year 1686, in the letter to Papebroch already partly mentioned above, the praised Baron De Blun thus makes mention: Not long ago the Reverend Fathers Capuchins in this city built an elegant chapel, in which they exposed to public veneration this effigy, whose engraving expressed in copper I send. This sacred image is seen in several other places of this kingdom; nay, through all Germany I remember to have often seen it in various churches under the name of St. Kummernis. An apograph of this image was printed at Prague with a devout and prolix prayer to the same Saint in German, which I here for brevity's sake omit. But that effigy, which according to the chronographic subscription was erected in the year 1684, is distinguished from all others by the royal adornment of garments and gems, as thou seest here.
[67] In England she formerly had It seems also that our Saint was already long known in other regions of Europe. First of all I suspect that the English formerly venerated St. Wilgefortis with a peculiar cult: for we have in our Museum an Enchiridion of the illustrious church of Salisbury in England, filled with most devout prayers and most beautiful images, and those indeed not a few (so runs the title of the book), in which peculiar mention is made of St. Wilgefortis, as we shall presently see. This little book of hours was printed (the words are placed at the end of the little book) at Paris in the house of the notable man Germain Hardouyn, sworn bookseller of the University of Paris, dwelling by the palace, at the sign of the divine Margaret, in the year 1533, as is gathered from the paschal table. In that Enchiridion, adorned with elegant little images of various kinds, and printed on parchment in most beautiful type, after the penitential Psalms are read the litanies of all the Saints, and in them, after SS. Sitha, Fredeswida, Wenefreda, and other holy English women, St. Wilgefortis also is invoked.
[68] Elsewhere in the same little book, among the Collects concerning various Saints, is read one concerning holy Wilgefortis virgin and martyr under this Antiphon: her proper Antiphon and prayer.
Hail, holy handmaid of Christ, Wilgefortis, who with thy whole soul didst love Christ; when thou didst spurn the nuptials of the king of Sicily; to the crucified Lord thou gavest thy faith. By thy father's command thou didst undergo the torments of the prison; a beard grew on thy face, which thou obtainedst from Christ as a gift, which thou wishedst for thyself, and didst confound those wishing to wed thee. The impious father, seeing thee thus disfigured, raised thee up [*], prepared upon the cross: where with thy virtues thou didst render thy pleasing soul as quickly as possible, commended to Christ. Because with devout praises we recall thy memory, O virgin, O blessed Wilgefortis, pray for us, we beseech.
℣. Grace is poured out on thy lips. ℞. Therefore hath God blessed thee for ever.
Let us pray.
Look propitiously, we beseech thee, Lord, upon thy family, by the merits and prayers of blessed Wilgefortis thy virgin and martyr, the king's daughter; and as at her prayers thou didst make the beard, which she desired, grow forth on her from heaven; so deign to augment the desires of our heart with the benefits of thy heavenly grace. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
[69] Now let us cross from England into Normandy, a province of Gaul. In Normandy she is even now celebrated, There too I find the cult of St. Wilgefortis, and a chapel consecrated under her patronage, as is more fully clear from letters given to us in the year 1706 by the Reverend Father Henry De la Crochiniere, Rector of our college of Dieppe, which run thus: The day before yesterday I went to the village of Arques, famous for the victory won by Henry the Great, and distant a league and more from our city of Dieppe; in which village I saw a quite ancient chapel sacred to God the best and greatest under the invocation of St. Wilgefortis, where there stands on the single altar a statue of the said Virgin projecting from the stone wall, which exhibits the virgin herself bearded, clad in an ankle-length garment, bound to the cross by a rope on hands and feet. Besides, there are seen at the sides of the altar two more recent images of the same Virgin, in one of which she is painted standing before a king or judge, who seems to wish to induce her to adore an idol erected nearby. But in the other picture she is painted already hanging on the cross and surrounded by several persons of both sexes praying, painted, however, with this difference, that there her hair flows down nearly to her feet, which in the statue scarcely appears, being bound perhaps with a linen cloth at the back of the head. The feast of the said holy Virgin is celebrated in this chapel on the nineteenth day of July, on which day especially a great concourse of the peoples is made to her; but throughout the whole year the faithful very often come, even more than twenty leagues removed, having prayed to holy Wilgefortis to obtain from God health for the sick, especially infants, or a good death for the dying. It was told me that the same Saint is still worshipped in the village of Doudeville, and in some other places of that region of Caux, commonly called du pays de Caux.
[70] where also her Acts have been printed. To these letters was joined a French little book, printed about sixty years ago at Dieppe, which embraces the life of holy Wilgefortis (in the title she is besides called Dignefortis and Virgofortis) in nine chapters. In the last page of this little book is had this common prayer: May blessed Dignefortis virgin and martyr implore for us pardon, we beseech thee, Lord, who was always pleasing to thee both by the merit of her chastity and by the profession of thy virtue. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. The cult of St. Wilgefortis does not seem to have penetrated further into Gaul; nay, in certain provinces of that kingdom this Saint is altogether unknown: for the unusual image of the bearded Virgin rendered the Sequani, peoples of Gaul, astonished, as will be clear from the letter to be given in the following paragraph, where also we shall try to answer certain doubts proposed in it concerning St. Wilgefortis, and by the same labor illustrate, as far as can be done, her cult and Acts.
Annotata* Read acrius (more fiercely) or ocius (more quickly).
§ VII. Certain doubts proposed concerning St. Wilgefortis are answered.
Since at the beginning of the current eighteenth century a grave dispute was raised among the Sequani concerning St. Wilgefortis, The Reverend Father Ex-Provincial of the Carmelites, the Very Reverend Father Andrew of St. Nicholas, Ex-Provincial of the Order of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel, thought he should seek out the judgment of the hagiographers of Antwerp by letters given to them at Besançon of the Sequani on the Nones of January in the year 1706, in which, after a friendly greeting, he thus writes: The hinge of the question turns thus. There was exposed in certain churches an effigy of a bearded virgin hanging from a cross, whom they say to have been the daughter of a heathen king, and therefore crowned with a diadem, and to have made martyrdom for the preserving of a vow of modesty and the constancy of the Christian faith. The effigy of the bearded virgin seemed portentous to several, and some, even good Catholics, wished it removed from the churches, lest it should further move laughter among the ignorant and less pious common people, others, perhaps more prudent and more pious, dissuading it, however.
[72] the state of the controversy concerning St. Wilgefortis being set forth, Being consulted, I inclined to the latter opinion,
to descend to which side these arguments persuaded me; namely that, the diocesan bishops seeing and being silent, several little pictures of this kind, and even statues, have not rarely been exposed already for a long time in the churches of the Catholic church throughout Bavaria and all Germany, in the Gauls also here and there and in upper Burgundy; nay, even among the orthodox Swiss in the very church of St. Nicholas under the eyes of the bishop of Lausanne, who, an exile from his Lausanne and driven out by the heterodox, has a temporary seat at the very church of St. Nicholas in the Swiss town of Fribourg. There is added the authority of the Martyrologies, especially the Roman, in which on the twentieth of July, as I said, we read that St. Wilgefortis contended on the cross for faith and modesty and carried off the triumph.
[73] and to certain doubts concerning the name, Nor is it an obstacle with me that the Roman Martyrology does not mention the bearded face in the Virgin, and called her Wilgefortis, whom the Bavarians and their neighbors the Swiss call Kumernum, the Germans in the vernacular Ontkummer, and we Gauls are wont to name Kombre and Ankombre: for that variety of appellations was introduced according to the variety of regions and idioms; just as the silence of the Roman Martyrology concerning the bearded face of Wilgefortis does not persuade us that Kumernus or Ontkummer is to be distinguished from that Wilgefortis; both because the Roman Martyrology is wont not to paint the faces of the martyrs, but sometimes only briefly to recite the manner and cause of the martyrdom; and also especially, because just as the common people inflect the name of that holy Virgin in different ways, so also the German Martyrology said in Latin Liberata, whom the Roman called Wilgefortis.
[74] and blemish, The controverted matter Bartholomew Ricci of your Society seems openly to have defined, who in a little book pious as well as learned, which he published on the Triumph of Jesus Christ Crucified, wrote these things on the twentieth of July: "In Portugal St. Wilgefortis virgin, daughter of the king of Portugal, contending for the defense of the Christian religion and of modesty, when she had asked Christ her spouse to be disfigured, lest she should be sought by a lover for marriage, suddenly a rather full beard grew forth on her. She is worshipped among the Belgians in several places, but under the appellation of St. Ontkommera; perhaps from the driving away of cares and troubles, as thou mayest gather in her manuscript Life. The Roman Martyrology and Molanus on Usuardus." Thus Ricci, in the place above. And if these things are as certain as they are clear, nothing certainly more certain or clearer could be adduced to our purpose for the identity of the person, name, and passion of the holy Virgin.
[75] Nevertheless a scruple is raised by the narration which the Bavarians and their neighbors the Swiss appended to the little pictures of the same Virgin, and the Acts of the Saint being learnedly observed, which runs thus: "She was the daughter of a certain gentile king, exceedingly beautiful, whom the heathen king desired with all his vows to receive in marriage; but this the said Virgin exceedingly grieved at, as one who had chosen God for her spouse. Whereupon the father, angry, casts her into prison. The Virgin invokes God to help her, and, he appearing to her, earnestly asks him to change her into such a form that she may please no man, but God alone, and to make her like himself in hair and beard. When her parent saw this, he asked of her what this form was? She said that her spouse, whom she had chosen, had made her altogether like himself, for, she added, she wished no other but the Crucified. And so the angry parent said: Thou must then die on the cross with thy God; and she, most ready for this, died on the cross. Whoever invokes the holy Virgin in his necessity, she succors him, by name Kumernus. She was buried in Holland in a church which is called Steinberg." A scruple, I say, is raised, that the Virgin, a martyr in Portugal, is said to be buried in Holland, and indeed in the church of Steinberg. For how, if Kumernus or Ontkummera be one and the same with Wilgefortis, on what occasion and at what time was she translated from Portugal into Holland, and laid in the church of Steinberg?
[76] Let it therefore be permitted, for the Christian and Catholic cause, together with the pious and learned of our nation, to propose to thee, he proposes his doubts, most learned hagiographer, certain heads to be resolved concerning that grave business. I. Who was that bearded Virgin on the cross? Was it Wilgefortis, of whom the Roman Martyrology on the twentieth of July? II. Whether Kumernus, Ontkummera, Liberata, be one and the same with Wilgefortis, as the praised Ricci of yours thought? III. How the common people are wont to inflect in your Belgium the name of the bearded Virgin? IV. Whether truly the Virgin's remains were carried into Holland, and laid in the church of Steinberg? By whom, and whence, and at what time? V. Whether there was truly in Portugal a gentile king, whose daughter Wilgefortis or Ontkummera was? Who was that king, and with what proper name endowed? What were the boundaries of the kingdom? At what time did he reign? VI. On what day through the circle of the year was the festivity of that Virgin wont to be celebrated among you? This is the whole letter of a prudent man, as is clear from the very context, and a learned one, besides the conclusion and exordium, in which he runs out into the praise of the hagiographers whom he was consulting.
[77] to the first of which, What was then answered to this letter, I know not; but what now, the matter being maturely examined, I think should be answered, I shall presently indicate. There are proposed in the epilogue of this letter, in few words, many doubts, which I think I shall never clearly satisfy: for the subject of the matter of which there is treatment is exceedingly obscure and intricate. Lest, however, I seem to have dissembled anything, I answer to the several points in order, as I can, since as I would is not permitted. First it is asked, who was that bearded Virgin? Was it Wilgefortis, of whom the Roman Martyrology on the twentieth of July? I judge that no other Wilgefortis (whatever certain more recent Portuguese and Spaniards distinguish two Wilgefortes) is designated in the Roman Martyrology than she who is worshipped everywhere in Belgium and Germany, and is painted bearded on the cross: for the Germans and Belgians first made mention of that Virgin and Martyr, and supplied her to the Roman Martyrology; but without doubt they supplied Wilgefortis or Liberata, whom they knew to be worshipped among themselves and painted on a cross, the ancient writers and Spanish Breviaries asserting that their St. Liberata, to whom the new Pseudo-chronicles first added the name of Wilgefortis, was beheaded, and making no word of the punishment of the cross.
[78] the texts of certain Martyrologies being compared among themselves, That the answer may obtain its force and clarity, the genealogy of certain Martyrologies must be fetched a little deeper. Hermann Greven the Carthusian, who printed the Martyrology of the monk Usuardus with various additions in the year of the Lord 1515 at Cologne, and published it again in the year 1521, in both, in the said additions, has thus on 20 July: Of St. Wilgefortis Virgin and Martyr, daughter of the king of Portugal. From these the compilers of the German Martyrology, Adam Walasser and Father Peter Canisius of our Society, most celebrated for his apostolic labors through Germany, and having died among the Swiss at Fribourg with a reputation of sanctity, drew their own concerning St. Wilgefortis, and augmented it from somewhere. This Martyrology, which is commonly cited under the name of Canisius, printed at Dillingen in the year 1561, and reprinted in the years 1573 and 1599, in the first and second edition, according to Molanus, has thus in German on 20 July: Holy Virgin and martyr Wilgefortis, daughter of the king of Portugal, who is called by some in Latin Liberata and in German Onkummer; to which in the third edition, namely of the year 1599, these things are superadded: Who for the preservation of her virginity and the Christian faith, hung and dead on the cross, passed to Christ into heaven.
[79] We have besides three editions of Usuardus augmented by John Molanus, doctor of sacred Theology, made in the years 1568 at Louvain, 1573 in the same place, and 1583 at Antwerp. and the texts of various Martyrologies, In the first, on the said day, after the text of Usuardus, I thus read: Of St. Wilgefortis Virgin and Martyr, daughter of the king of Portugal, whom some surname in Latin Liberata, but in German Ontcommera. The former part of this elogium Molanus took from the Additions of Greven cited; but the latter from the German of Canisius's first edition, as is clear to one considering, and he himself indicates it by certain little notes added. In the second and third edition he does not mention that she was the king's daughter, but adds the cause and manner of her death, thus writing: In Portugal, the birthday of St. Wilgefortis (with this little note added in the margin: She is surnamed Ontcommera in German), Virgin and Martyr, who, dying on the cross out of love of chastity and of the Christian faith, happily passed to the Lord. This new addition of Molanus agrees with those things which in the third edition of the German Martyrology are also read added, and probably were translated from it hither.
[80] From the premises, and especially from the edition of Molanus, which Baronius consulted, it is answered a little more fully. St. Wilgefortis was first inserted into the Roman Martyrology toward the end of the Pontificate of Gregory XIII, and her elogium is read thus in the Antwerp edition of the year 1586: In Portugal, of St. Wilgefortis Virgin and Martyr, who, contending for the Christian faith and modesty, on the cross deserved happily to consummate her martyrdom. In the edition of the year 1608 the last words of the elogium, with no change of signification, were thus changed: She deserved to obtain a glorious triumph. And thus thereafter they were and are read in the Roman. The former reading entire, from the Roman then most recently corrected under Pope Gregory, is read also in the Basel Martyrology according to the Roman, restored to the new reckoning of the Calendar and the truth of Ecclesiastical history, and published by command of Jacobus Christophorus bishop of Basel at Freiburg im Breisgau 1584. To the Roman Martyrology Baronius here noted nothing, except that the same things are had in the Additions of Molanus. From the same source the Portuguese Martyrology of the proper Saints of that kingdom, printed at Coimbra in the year 1591, seems also to have taken its own, and expressly says that she is called by the Germans Ontcommera, and by some in Latin Liberata. I think these Martyrologies drew their announcements from the Acts themselves, or certainly from the manuscript Florarium, which is more ancient than all the Martyrologies hitherto here cited, as we shall see in the following paragraph.
[81] Now let us proceed to the second question, in which it is asked On occasion of the second question whether Kumernus, Ontkommera, Liberata, be one and the same with Wilgefortis? I answer that Kumernus or Ontkommera is the same as Wilgefortis, and I confess that she is sometimes called by the Belgians and Germans in Latin Liberata. But I deny that our Wilgefortis is the same as St. Liberata, whom the people of Sigüenza venerate as their patroness. To judge thus the following reasons move me. First of all Wilgefortis is not a Spanish or Portuguese name, as is clear even from its first element, which is wont to be named by the Germans and Belgians a double V, and thus a W formed. But this letter W is as unusual to the Spaniards and Portuguese as to the Italians and the ancient Latins. Nor can it be thought that that name crept into Spain with the Goths, Suevi, or other nations, because the Spanish writers as well as the Portuguese later than the Pseudo-Dexter
contend that their holy Virgin, whom they also call Wilgefortis, suffered in the second century after the birth of Christ; receding so much the further from the true Wilgefortis, the more they make her more ancient.
[82] the fraud of the Pseudo-Dexter is detected, On this occasion a vehement suspicion came upon me concerning the deceits by which here the Pseudo-Dexter circumvented the Spaniards: for that pseudonymous writer first, as far as by investigation I could learn, called St. Liberata of Sigüenza, who under the name of Liberata alone was anciently known, also Wilgefortis, thus writing in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 138: Wilgefortis or Liberata, daughter of Catelius kinglet of the Portuguese, suffered at Amphilochium. And again at the year 308: In Portugal, in the city of Cale, which is situated near Castralaelia, St. Wilgefortis flourishes, having suffered death for faith and modesty. But, I pray, what had Flavius Lucius Dexter, who lived in the age of St. Jerome, in common with the name of Wilgefortis, that he should write it in his Chronicle, whose first element, a double V or W, he knew not, much less could write? Besides, the same causes of death, for faith and modesty, as are read in the last elogium of Dexter, so are read also in the Additions of Molanus to Usuardus printed in the year 1573; so that it must be judged that either Molanus here had before his eyes the Chronicle of Dexter, or the author of the Chronicle had before his eyes the Additions of Molanus. But it is certain that Molanus first published those additions publicly in type before the Chronicle of Dexter became known to the world. It seems therefore to follow that the author of the Chronicle borrowed those things from Molanus, and that the Chronicle itself can be no other than that of the Pseudo-Dexter, who devised that writing at the close of the 16th century, to the disgrace of his name and the confusion of Ecclesiastical history.
[83] and a double St. Liberata is distinguished, There is besides a vast difference between St. Wilgefortis, worshipped in Germany and elsewhere, and Liberata now patroness of Sigüenza: for the former is not painted or carved otherwise than hung on a cross, on which also she is believed to have expired; but the latter, by writers and Breviaries more ancient than the Pseudo-Dexter, no mention being made of the cross, is said to have been beheaded. Whence I judge that in the new Sigüenza Lessons the Acts of St. Liberata and St. Wilgefortis are confounded, and that wrongly one has been made out of two different persons. Add that St. Wilgefortis, according to the miracle narrated in the Acts, is depicted bearded, which miraculous beard no one attributes to St. Liberata of Sigüenza. To this last reason even Tamayo himself succumbed in the Spanish Martyrology on 20 July, noting this: Some suspect that our holy Virgin and martyr Wilgefortis is also the same as her whom the Germans call Ontcommera; in proof of which matter they set forth the history of our holy Virgin and martyr. Concerning which I have doubted very often; because nowhere in our Breviaries, Chronicles, writers, and monuments most ancient or more recent is found the miracle of the beard which the Germans attribute to the holy Spanish Virgin.
[84] The third question is easily satisfied. Lighter is the third question, than that it should much detain us: for it is only asked how the common people are wont to inflect in Belgium the name of the bearded Virgin? The name of St. Wilgefortis is wont to be inflected in Belgium in a double manner. Our Rosweyde in his Belgian Legend of the Saints with certain persons calls her Ontcommene; which word is derived from the Belgian verb ontcomen, which properly signifies to escape; so that ontcommene is the same as she who escaped a danger. Perhaps this Belgian name alludes to the Latin word Liberata, and draws its origin from the Acts themselves, because St. Wilgefortis, through the miraculous beard, escaped the danger of losing her virginity, and was freed from the conjugal embrace. Other Belgians call her Oncommer, because, says Augustine Wichmann in his Marian Brabant book 3 chapter 5, she frees her worshippers from solicitude, anxiety, and straitness of heart; from which our vernacular becommeren, that is, to be (or rather to render) solicitous or anxious. Although this etymology is not to be repudiated, yet I think that this Belgian name of St. Wilgefortis, Oncommer, properly has its origin from the German compound Ohnkummer, which signifies "without solicitude"; namely because either she herself without anxiety underwent martyrdom, as I said elsewhere, or because she frees those imploring her help from solicitude and straitness.
[85] To the fourth question, whether truly the Virgin's remains were carried into Holland and laid in the church of Steinberg? To the doubts in the fourth But by whom and whence, and at what time? nothing certain can be answered. For in Holland I find no city, village, or church of that name. There is indeed Steinberg, a town of Brabant, which perhaps is thought to be situated in Holland, because it is now subject to the power of the Dutch. But at Steinberg in Brabant nothing now survives except the bare name of St. Oncommera, which is given there to a certain land fenced against the force of the sea with dikes, and is commonly called Sinte Oncommers-polder. Although our Saint was formerly most celebrated there, it is not wonderful that nothing is now known of her cult and relics, since that town, formerly noble for commerce and a chapter of canons, after various calamities of fire and water, lost not only the vestiges of its former nobility, but even of its ancestral religion. Wherefore I cannot make out whence the Bavarians and Swiss dug out that notice of the Steinberg burial. Since, therefore, that translation of the relics to Steenbergen is not established, it is clear that much less can it be said by whom, and whence, and at what time they were translated.
[86] The fifth question embraces in few words many doubts; and to those proposed in the fifth question it is answered uncertainly. namely, whether there was truly in Portugal a gentile king whose daughter Wilgefortis or Oncommera was? Who was that king, and with what proper name endowed? What were the boundaries of the kingdom? at what time did he reign? To these it must be answered one by one. First, as for what pertains to the king's title, it is certainly invented, since the Portuguese themselves acknowledge only kings properly so called many centuries after paganism was extinguished. To answer the rest, first a distinction is needed. If there is treatment of St. Liberata of Sigüenza, to whom the Pseudo-Dexter and his followers superadd the name of Wilgefortis, who her father was, and with what proper name endowed, Tamayo disputes at length in the Spanish Martyrology on 18 January, and there contends that he should be named Caius Atilius, against the new Sigüenza Lessons, which call him Lucius Catellius Severus. But what the boundaries of the kingdom of this king were, the new Sigüenza Lessons indicate in some manner, if one is pleased to believe them, in which he is said to be president of Galicia and Portugal and kinglet of that land; who had the city Belchagia as the seat of his kingdom, which today is called Bayona of Tuy. Further, at what time the father of St. Liberata reigned must be gathered from the same new Lessons, according to which his daughter deserved on the cross to attain the palm of martyrdom about the year of the Lord one hundred and thirty-nine. These things, I say, can be answered from the new Sigüenza Office and from the tradition, such as it is, of the Spaniards and Portuguese, if the question be instituted concerning St. Liberata. But if the same be asked concerning St. Wilgefortis, whom we judge altogether distinct from St. Liberata of Sigüenza, I answer that in her Acts neither the name of the father, nor the boundaries or time of the kingdom, are expressed. Her father is only called by a vague name a gentile king of Portugal, who waged war with the king of Sicily. But these very things smell of a fable, since in the time of paganism there were neither kings of Portugal nor of Sicily, much less did they wage wars among themselves.
[87] The sixth question being resolved; To the last question, in which it is asked on what day through the circle of the year the festivity of that Virgin was wont to be celebrated among us, the answer is easy. Although St. Wilgefortis in most Belgian Legends is placed on 20 July, yet this day is not so fixed to her cult but that in various villages of Belgium she is invoked at different times of the year with a very great concourse of the people, as I understood from the letters of certain parish priests. Nay, in the Passion of that holy Virgin and martyr, taken from the manuscript of St. Salvator of Utrecht, toward the end these things are set down: But the aforesaid virgin Wilgefortis suffered on the 12th day of the month of July for the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen. But among some her feast is kept on the 20th day of the month of July; but according to others on the feast of Dionysius in October. In our manuscript Florarium, which was probably collected at Rouge-Cloître near Brussels, she is reported on 19 July, on which day also she is solemnly honored at Arques a village of Normandy, situated not far from the city of Dieppe.
[88] the epilogue of the whole answer is made. And these are the things which I have thought should be answered to the learned letter of the religious man. But although these answers cannot be proved by very ancient monuments, yet they are such as to show that the cult of St. Wilgefortis, begun from time immemorial before the Bull of Urban VIII, is legitimate. Hence therefore it is clear that the Sequani can safely imitate the pious cult bestowed by the Belgians, Germans, and other nations on St. Wilgefortis, which was the chief reason for doubting, and the principal aim of the letter. Nor ought the beard miraculously born on the Virgin to terrify them: for it could have been done, and that it was so done is a tradition continued together with the cult of the image painted from time immemorial. Did not God do other things no less marvelous for the favor of his spouses the Virgins? Did he not fix St. Lucy, imperiled in her modesty, so in her place in the sight of all, that by no force could she be moved even a nail's breadth? Did he not surround and defend St. Agnes, near to danger, with a terrifying light? Did he not send angels to St. Cecilia and others to guard their virginity? What, that in this very matter we do not lack an example: for the people of Ávila in Spain worship St. Paula virgin surnamed Barbata, whose beautiful face, as her Acts say, once at once began to be filled with a density of hairs, when a certain lascivious youth pursued her. The memory of that holy Virgin, says Tamayo in the Spanish Martyrology on 20 February, still perseveres among the people of Ávila, as her effigy is seen in the most ancient church of St. Lawrence. Add that it is not so portentous that bearded women are found: for Bivarius attests, in the Additions of Braulio page 17, that under Philip II king of the Spains he saw at Peñaranda a woman bearded down to the girdle. If anyone desires to read other examples of bearded women, let him inspect the Physico-mathematico-historical mirror which the Reverend Don John Zahn, canon regular of the Premonstratensian Order, published in the year 1696 at Nuremberg, where in volume 3 page 71 he will find several prodigies of this kind.
§ VIII. The various Acts of St. Wilgefortis, and a judgment concerning them.
There are in our Museum various Acts of St. Wilgefortis written in Belgian, German, French, and Latin.
St. Wilgefortis's Belgian Acts, Let us begin with the Belgian. Besides her Passion printed among the Lives of the Saints by our Rosweyde on 20 July, and, as I think, published in Belgian from our Latin papers, I have a certain Belgian manuscript, concerning which the Reverend Don Schuurmans, parish priest of Velzeke, in his letters given to us in the year 1706, thus testifies: I searched the archives, and found the original of this enclosure, which likewise I transmit to you. But the enclosure was the martyrdom of St. Wilgefortis, which nearly agrees with the Rosweyde edition, except that at the end it says she suffered in the year of the Lord 130, whereas Rosweyde defers her death to the year of Christ 138. But whence each determined these years I shall not easily say, since the Latin Acts designate no time of the martyrdom. Another manuscript, embracing the martyrdom of the same Saint in an ancient and dislocated Belgian poem, was copied from a parchment codex in the village of Terdeghem near Cassel, and thence transmitted to us. In that poem indeed the substance of the history is preserved, but with the license customary to poets various dialogues are instituted between the father and daughter, and consoling angels and other pious episodes are introduced. So much for the Belgian Legends.
[90] The above-praised Father Ignatius Dorn, priest of our Society, enclosed in his letters cited before the Passion of St. Wilgefortis written in German, The German and French are briefly indicated. which he asserts he received at Mainz from a certain elder vicar of the chief church. In these German Acts indeed it is narrated that St. Wilgefortis was the daughter of the king of Portugal; but concerning the war between the king of Portugal and of Sicily there is deep silence. A far different occasion of the martyrdom is there brought forward: for it is said that the father himself solicited his daughter to incestuous love, and, she resisting his impious desire, tortured her with various torments, and at last, after the beard was obtained from heaven, affixed her to a cross. Besides this German manuscript Passion I have a French little book printed about sixty years ago at Dieppe in Normandy, which augmented the Latin Acts of the same Martyr with many words, and adorned them with certain pious episodes. In the title of the little book she is called Dignefortis, otherwise Wilgefortis or Virgofortis, and it is added that she is the patroness of Belgium; which last title, taken in strictness, smacks somewhat of hyperbole. But now let us treat of the Latin Acts.
[91] We have four Latin manuscripts, of which if thou knowest one, Three Latin manuscripts being omitted, thou knowest all, so similar are they in narration. The antiquity of three I know not. Of one, namely our manuscript Florarium, I can gather the age approximately from 16 July, where it is thus read: At Maastricht on the Meuse, the deposition of SS. bishops Monulph and Gondulph, of whom the first was heir and lord of the town of Dinant, now, alas! in our times destroyed, namely in the year of salvation 1466. From it therefore I shall here produce the Acts of St. Wilgefortis, about to excerpt from the rest, if anything different from this and worthy of note shall occur. The said Florarium, then, on 19 July has thus: In Portugal, the passion of holy Wilgefortis the virgin, who thence is named Liberatrix, Eutropia, or Regrufledis. She was the daughter of the king of Portugal, then a pagan, waging war against the king of Sicily. Whence, wars of this kind continuing, it happened that the king of Sicily entered with violent hand the borders of Portugal, to resist his power, where he did much damage. Nor was the king of Portugal able to resist his power. Therefore, several nobles laboring for the concord of the kings, at last peace is settled on this condition; that the king of Portugal should give the king of Sicily his daughter.
[92] The Acts of the Saint are given from the manuscript Florarium. Both kings, therefore, coming together for this cause into one place, blessed Deliberatrix is set before their presence, and the matrimony promised by her father is announced to her, and it is urged that she give her assent. Then the blessed Virgin answered that she would not be joined to any man, but only to the Crucified. Whereupon both kings, much perplexed and moved, caused her to be most strictly imprisoned, that thus through tribulations she might be recalled from her purpose. But she, imprisoned, prayed God to keep her chaste and immaculate from all masculine consort, and so to dispose and disfigure her in body, that she might no more be sought by any man. Which was done: for she was made bearded after the manner of a man. Presented, therefore, to her father thus bearded, the father, moved, said that she had done this by magic art. To whom she answered that the beard had grown on her not by magic art, but that her spouse the Crucified had granted it to her at her prayers, that so she might preserve her chastity. To whom the father said that unless she should deny God the Crucified, and adore his gods, she should be crucified. But she, constant in her purpose, was by her father's command crucified, where various punishments and tribulations were inflicted on her. And she, drawing near to death, prayed for all keeping the memory of her Passion, that they might be freed from all tribulations of heart and body and spirit; and, heard, she gave up the spirit. In three other manuscripts, after the death of the holy Martyr, are added these words: Whereupon horrible thunders arose at that time, and the palace of her father was consumed by fire.
[93] The four Latin manuscripts attribute various names to St. Wilgefortis, In this Florarium, as is clear to one considering, neither the place nor the time in which the holy woman lived or suffered, nor the name of the father or spouse or of any other person is anywhere indicated; nay, not even the very name of Wilgefortis is so proper to those Acts but that the same things are set forth under other names: for in the manuscript of St. Salvator of Utrecht this is the title: The Life of St. Regenflegis Virgin. By the same name, the letter G of the last syllable being changed into D, is entitled a manuscript exemplar which came to us from the papers of William Lindanus, first bishop of Roermond; this indeed also in the context calls her Regenfledis, otherwise than the Utrecht one, which, having named her Regenflegis in the title, afterward in the context calls her Wilgefortis. Only the manuscript codex of the monastery of Canons Regular of Rouge-Cloître near Brussels is consistent with itself, and in both places names her Wilgefortis. The beginning of these three manuscripts is this: The blessed Virgin and martyr Wilgefortis (Regenfledis in the Lindanus paper) was the daughter of the king of Portugal, then a pagan, and waging wars against the king of Sicily. The rest also in all the exemplars run with equal tenor to the end, except that in the Utrecht manuscript is superadded: But the aforesaid virgin Wilgefortis suffered on the 12th day of the month of July for the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen. But among some her feast is kept on the 20th day of the month of July; but according to others on the feast of Dionysius in October. In the Lindanus paper, although in it she is everywhere called Regenfledis, it is noted that she suffered on the 13th day before the Kalends of August or the 20th day of July, on which we have seen Wilgefortis everywhere reported in the Martyrologies.
[94] These three manuscripts our Father Rosweyde had long ago in his collectanea, by which they will have the same Saint to be signified; and he left it annotated to the word Regenflegis in the title, that she is called by another name Eutropia and Wilgefortis and vulgarly Ontcommera; suspecting, I believe, that by those different names the same person is designated, because the same Acts were read under those names. To me the names Wilgefortis, Regenflegis, and Eutropia seem too discrepant to agree with one and the same person. It is otherwise concerning the name Oncommera, which the Belgians and Germans gave to St. Wilgefortis from the effect, by which she frees her worshippers from straits. The name Regenflegis I have sought in vain in very many catalogues of the Saints. I found indeed Regenfredis; but she was abbess of Denain, and so wholly different from St. Wilgefortis. Several Eutropias occurred to me; the first is a martyr at Alexandria, of whom we treated in our Acts on 25 May. Another was a virgin and martyr at Sibapolis or Nisibis in Mesopotamia, crowned with martyrdom with St. Febronia and other virgins, of whom there was also treatment on 25 June of ours. A third virgin of that name suffered with Nicasius bishop of Rheims in the irruption of the Vandals, or as others will have it of the Huns. A fourth Eutropia is a widow in Gaul, of whom Sidonius Apollinaris writes book 6 letter 2 to Pragmatius. All these are without doubt distinct from our Saint. Augustine Wichmann indeed asserts, in his Marian Brabant book 3 chapter 5, that the Carthusians in their ecclesiastical Office have a Collect of this kind: O God, who didst wonderfully make a beard grow forth on blessed Eutropia hanging on the cross, etc. But I turned over the Carthusian Breviary in vain to find this prayer, nay I went to the Carthusians of Antwerp themselves, who know nothing of this prayer or of St. Eutropia. Perhaps formerly in their Breviary the name of Eutropia, according to the Acts given above, was confounded with Wilgefortis.
[95] I should prefer to suspect that by each of those names a several Saint comes, but certain things seem to agree with different persons. if however they be proved by fitting arguments to have deserved such a title; and to be of opinion that the same Acts, which were compiled without the due circumstances for some Saint of obscure name, who nevertheless it was established had met death out of love of chastity, seemed fit to others, to apply to their Saints of equally obscure name, but suffering for the same cause after long intervals of time: for in the later centuries there was a certain itch of devising apocryphal writings concerning Saints of this kind, if the true could not be produced. Those simple men thought perhaps that they were less reverent toward their Saints, unless they set forth for the people to read writings of whatever kind concerning their deeds; and would that they had not done this for the sake of gain, at least those who make Saints near to death pray in such a way, as in these Acts holy Wilgefortis, now affixed to the cross and approaching death, is read to have prayed for all keeping the memory of her passion, that they might be freed from all tribulations of heart and body and spirit, and, heard, she gave up the spirit. As alien as this prayer is from the humility of the Saints, so fit is the promise subjoined to stimulate the piety of the religious populace, that it should rather frequent the altars and implore the intercession of such a Saint, than of another who has not promised so sure a help.
[96] as is shown by certain examples. I said that I should prefer to be of opinion that Acts which are of the same tenor and are read under the names of several Saints rather designate several different Saints under such names, than one and the same, to whom those several names agree. Many such examples can be shown in the Acts of the Saints, where Acts attributed to one saint are also attributed to another. Several applications of this kind are at hand. Let for example the Acts of St. Venantius martyr of Camerino, who, since he was not so celebrated a name as now, he who wrote his Acts many centuries after the Saint's martyrdom took to himself the Acts, such as they were, of St. Agapitus crowned with martyrdom at Palestrina,
and, with a few changes, applied them pure and simple to St. Venantius, as may be seen on 18 May of ours. The same did whoever he be who obtruded on the nuns of Herse near Paderborn, concerning their St. Saturnina, Acts, as they think, proper; but in truth taken from the more ancient ones of St. Benedicta virgin and martyr at Lyons, or rather Laon in the Gauls, ascribed on 8 October to the Roman Martyrology, and accommodated to that St. Saturnina, as was noted in the historical Commentary concerning this St. Saturnina on 20 May. More things of this kind I could adduce, if it pleased, or were needful.
[97] The Acts of the Saint appear suspect, I suspect that the same was done in the Acts of St. Wilgefortis, which, as they were first fitted to that Saint with little circumspection, so were more rashly attributed to other Saints of other names. I have already indicated above that certain circumstances of these Acts are apocryphal: for they say that the king of Sicily and the king of Portugal, then still a pagan, waged wars among themselves, as if they had neighboring kingdoms, nay that the king of Sicily entered with violent hand the borders of Portugal, and, superior in arms, inflicted much damage on this kingdom. But, I pray, who in Sicily or Portugal were endowed with the royal title? When were their kingdoms so near that the one could enter the other with violent hand, at least without an armed fleet, of which no mention is made in the Acts? When also was the power of the king of Sicily (of Sicily alone, I say) at any times so great that he should subdue the kingdom of Portugal; not to say that the name of Portugal is not so very ancient? If the author had brought a king of Galicia upon the stage instead of a king of Sicily, the fiction would have been more tolerable and more probable. These and other circumstances render the Acts of St. Wilgefortis, although they be brief, and on that head might seem sincere, so suspect that I cannot give credit to the greater part of them.
[98] and were perhaps augmented from the itch of writing a proper Legend, If I dared to follow my conjectures, I should safely believe nothing else in this matter than that in ancient times there was a certain virgin, whether native or foreign, as there were several in Belgium and elsewhere, who out of love of chastity did not hesitate to meet death. But since her proper name was unknown, she could by clerics or monks, on account of so generous a defense of her modesty, be called in Latin virgo fortis (strong virgin); which appellation the common people, not perceiving it, so inflected that by the corrupt pronunciation of the populace she was called Wilge-fortis. At least in the French Acts, as I noted above, she is named in the vernacular vierge forte, that is, virgo fortis. But the Christian people, ignorant of her other deeds, thought her to be worshipped and invoked, when it pleased God, who is wonderful in his Saints, to prove the sanctity of that strong Virgin by miracles. Certainly the compiler of her Life ought not to be presumed so impious or shameless as to wish to celebrate in a public writing as a Saint one who was not such and was not so held. Yet he thought that he could without grave sin devise the circumstances, in ignorance of all things, for one or the other or both ends, set forth by me above; namely that the Life, publicly written, might augment the people's veneration toward the Saint, or procure to some church, perhaps his own, where she was worshipped, a greater concourse of the people.
[99] However that may be, under the express name of St. Wilgefortis there is extant a Legend, although the country and other deeds of the Saint were unknown. whose origin I have hitherto not been able to find that exceeds the antiquity of three or four centuries. Nor did they draw their own from any other than that source, who first ascribed Wilgefortis to the Martyrologies and made her Portuguese, doubting nothing of the truth of those Acts, which, for lack of better writings, they could not evidently convict of falsehood, especially where they speak of the Virgin's country. I judge, saving a better opinion, that her country is no more Portugal than those things are true which are narrated in the Acts concerning the kings of Sicily and Portugal and their war, and concerning the last prayer of the holy Virgin hanging on the cross. The name Wilgefortis, if indeed it be proper to this Virgin and martyr, is certainly not Portuguese, but rather smacks of Germany or Belgium or some other northern region. Her memory was first ascribed to the ecclesiastical fasti in Germany and Belgium, in Germany and Belgium her cult flourishes more than anywhere else on earth. These are the things which I could collect concerning St. Wilgefortis, and thought should be said concerning her Acts, willingly about to change my opinion, if anyone shall produce solid reasons or ancient documents to illustrate the obscure history of this Saint, whose examination cost me no small labor.